Julian Berry

Julian Berry was born in 1946; his father was a sugar refiner and his mother an artist and interior decorator. At the age of nine he was consigned to boarding school, first to Twyford, and then to Winchester, where his father hoped he would become a fly-fisherman. In fact he developed two key interests at school, archaeology and letterpress printing. He was able to escape at the age of 17, as soon as he had learnt that he had got into Oxford, and with the help of Sir Mortimer Wheeler he signed up to join a Dutch dig in Jordan, where he arrived in January 1964. This book is about his youthful experiences as an archaeologist, and his travels at the time around Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. After Oxford he went on to found a letterpress book printing company, The Compton Press, which produced over 500 editions before its demise in 1980 along with virtually all of the British letterpress book production industry. He went on to work in marketing and became fascinated by the use of ‘data science’ as we now call it to predict human behaviour. This led to his founding a company that develops software solutions for marketers, where he is currently employed.