The Good Archivist

After cataloguing John Berger’s archive at the British Library, Tom Overton spent fifteen years following its traces from Moscow to Texas, from the Alps to Istanbul. He worked with Berger on editing Portraits: John Berger on Artists and Landscapes: John Berger on Art, with Matthew Harle on The Underground Sea: John Berger on Miners and the Miners’ Strike, and with Katya Berger on a forthcoming edition of Berger’s letters. He’s written for The Guardian, New Statesman, Frieze and London Review of Books and Paris Review blogs, works as the Archive Curator of the Barbican Centre, and lives in Sheffield.

Tom Overton

This extraordinary biography reveals not only the innovative and experimental nature of Berger’s historical and political insight, but the immense range of his intellectual output

John Berger is perhaps the only writer on art that I feel it essential to read. Tom Overton has written a brilliant account of his life and work.

From Life

Tom Overton got to know John Berger around 2010, after he gave his archive to the British Library: a kind of homecoming to his birthplace, after a life lived mostly in self-imposed exile in Switzerland and France. Sometimes, while cataloguing this, Tom would email John about a piece of work. Then there’d come a call: ‘This is John. John Berger. Can I tell you a story?’ Tom realised he was bringing this archive back into John’s life, resurrecting his memories. And then, at the beginning of 2017, John died. 
 
In this extraordinary new book, Overton explores the life and work of one of the great cultural figures of the last century, who came of age in a world threatened by nuclear apocalypse, and grew old in a world dominated by the idea that human life should be ordered by profit. Berger’s work reimagined the relationship between art and technology; charted migrant labour and the disappearance of peasants from the world; explored the AIDS crisis; was trenchantly opposed to the War on Terror and passionately committed to the Palestinian cause. There were so many different subjects to his work; so many precisely chosen forms. 
 
Cutting through reverence and drawing on both personal memory and a vast and previously unseen trove of material, Overton comes face to face with John Berger, showing the continued importance of a thinker whose work focused on communities past and present. For at the centre of this book, above all, is the idea that John Berger wants our company, and we need his.

John Berger

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Praise for John Berger

This extraordinary biography reveals not only the innovative and experimental nature of Berger’s historical and political insight, but the immense range of his intellectual output

This extraordinary biography reveals not only the innovative and experimental nature of Berger’s historical and political insight, but the immense range of his intellectual output

John Berger is perhaps the only writer on art that I feel it essential to read. Tom Overton has written a brilliant account of his life and work.

This extraordinary biography reveals not only the innovative and experimental nature of Berger’s historical and political insight, but the immense range of his intellectual output

This extraordinary biography reveals not only the innovative and experimental nature of Berger’s historical and political insight, but the immense range of his intellectual output

John Berger is perhaps the only writer on art that I feel it essential to read. Tom Overton has written a brilliant account of his life and work.

This extraordinary biography reveals not only the innovative and experimental nature of Berger’s historical and political insight, but the immense range of his intellectual output

This extraordinary biography reveals not only the innovative and experimental nature of Berger’s historical and political insight, but the immense range of his intellectual output

John Berger is perhaps the only writer on art that I feel it essential to read. Tom Overton has written a brilliant account of his life and work.

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