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The Zest is a digital commonplace book: a collection of stories, reflections and reviews, playlists and recipes and notes to engage, enthuse & inspire.
Support Me on Ko-fiCommonplace book
Kept from antiquity, particularly during the Renaissance and in the nineteenth century. Such books are essentially scrapbooks filled with items of every kind: recipes, quotes, letters, poems. [...] Each one is unique to its creator's particular interests but they almost always include passages found in other texts, sometimes accompanied by the compiler's responses.1
My idea for The Zest was inspired, in part by John Julius Norwich’s annual publication of his own commonplace collection A Christmas Cracker.
Norwich’s Crackers The writer, broadcaster and historian began collating his own commonplace book
In 1969, John Julius Norwich began sifting through his personal archives collating the various pieces he’d gathered over the years to compile into a short booklet. His creation was to send to his friends at Christmas as an alternative to the traditional card. As a writer, broadcaster and historian Norwich was a natural storyteller and the work was filled with his enthusiasms, witty narratives and heartwarming tales. Word of these collections quickly spread and the fruits of his labour became widely admired. Encouraged, Norwich eventually published the pamphlets, and so, the annual publication of A Christmas Cracker began. Its success led friends and strangers to send him their own findings over the course of the year to include in his latest edition and his charming Crackers soon became popular across the globe.
I’ve never been very good at religiously keeping a journal, I have always been a great collector of stuff; filling endless notebooks with my favourite quotes, ideas and snippets of stories alongside pages torn from newspapers and magazines, articles I’ve earmarked to read and extracts from pieces that have resonated with me. My idea to create a more concrete form of these collections has been brewing for many months and I’m excited to finally be able to share it.
the writer, broadcaster and historian John Julius Norwich’s : a collection of stories and reflections, playlists and recipes and notes to engage, enthuse & inspire.
writer, broadcaster and historian Norwich was a natural storyteller
Norwich’s Crackers have been a staple of my family’s Christmas for as long as I can remember, with my dad devouring his by the fire every Boxing Day, stopping to share his favourite anecdotes at regular intervals. It was these commonplaces, in fact, that serve as part of the inspiration behind The Zest. A space in which I could collate my own enthusiasms and inspiration. Whilst I’ve never been very good at religiously keeping a journal, I have always been a great collector of stuff; filling endless notebooks with my favourite quotes, ideas and snippets of stories alongside pages torn from newspapers and magazines, articles I’ve earmarked to read and extracts from pieces that have resonated with me. My idea to create a more concrete form of these collections has been brewing for many months and I’m excited to finally be able to share it.