Richard Wynne

The last great explorer

H W Tilman was a soldier decorated in both World Wars, a renowned mountaineer between the wars, and in later life an accomplished sailor to some of the world’s least hospitable regions. His many climbing and sailing books had been unavailable in their complete form for many years until I instigated a new Collected Edition, whose sixteen volumes...

A pioneer of recycling

Francis B Cooke wrote dozens of books on sailing between 1900 and 1960, and they are a mine of information on British yachts of his time, and the gear and techniques involved in sailing them, all of which remains relevant to the present day traditional sailing scene. But there was so much overlap in content between the books that it would have been...

Down the rabbit-hole

I’m quite pernickety regarding typesetting of continuous text, or ‘body text’. Done well, it eases the path of the author’s words into the reader’s mind; done badly, it can get in the way. Consider the setting of plain narrative; this is about as simple as it gets—but that’s not very simple, as we’ll see. There are so many elements in play that it’s hard to...

Tripp under sail

During the 1920s the skilled amateur artist and writer Herbert Alker Tripp produced three charming volumes recording his wanderings under sail around the east and south coasts of England, profusely illustrated with his masterful and evocative pen drawings. Over the years facsimile reprints had been made, but these suffered from the same cramped page...

Copy-editing

Making text (the ‘copy’) as good as it can be is at the heart of what I do. I have an eye, a nose even, for ambiguity, inconsistency, unfortunate grammar, vague punctuation, improvable sentence or paragraph structure, indeed all the things which can get in the way of your message to the reader.

Typesetting

A good text setting does not draw attention to itself and allows the author’s message to be absorbed effortlessly; a poor one is distracting. Whether your project be large or small, with or without illustration, I can complement its content and mood with sensitive typography and layout.

Proofreading

An eye for detail is essential, but alone not enough: the knock-on effect of proof corrections can be expensive, so they had better be necessary, not just nice to have. I respect this requirement and, as a typesetter myself, can suggest ways to minimise the disruption in repairing an error.

I’m old-fashioned enough—well, I’m old enough—to think shared interests and values can foster a good business relationship, which is why I’ve tried on this website to convey a little of what makes me tick.

Many of my projects have been nautical books, which I’ve been editing, producing, and publishing, single-handed, since 2009—about fifty titles to date, which are sold through the book trade, and worldwide online at Lodestar Books. But I can harness my passion for communication, insatiable curiosity, and editorial skills to a wide range of material; my experience, learning and reading embrace science, maths, nature, travel, economics, current affairs and computing, as well as sailing and boat maintenance (I sail a classic wooden yacht and run a website dedicated to her designer Albert Strange).

They say, ‘Put nothing on your CV which you don’t want to do again’; but then, how would I explain away the forty-years-plus I’ve spent in computer systems and software, in a variety of hands-on, management and commercial roles? And years of computer programming do make for a certain clarity of thought. Or perhaps it’s the other way round.

I’m a Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading and adhere to its Code of Practice.