Mercator: The Man Who Mapped the Planet. Nicholas Crane.

I know that there are lot of you around here who are just as keen on maps as I am. So, I thought I’d do a quick review of this book, which I’ve just finished.

For quite a while I’ve been meaning to read this book, but I found it difficult to come by in bookshops. Just before I went away I found myself in Stanfords in Covent Garden, and there it was. I finished it while I was in Ireland.

Gerard Mercator was a mathematician and map maker who lived in the 16th century. He was a man who was considered one of the greatest, and most thorough, map makers of his time – a time when the known boundaries of the world were expanding at an explosive rate. At the time when Merecator was perfecting his craft maps were very ornate things, almost known more for their artistic quality than for their accuracy. Mercator was a fine artist, engraver and writer. One of his earliest innovations was the perfection of the italic typeface – he wrote a best selling manual on italics.

But what made Mercator very special was his great innovation, the creation of what has become to be known as ‘Mercator’s projection’, the finest two dimensional representation of the three dimensional world that had ever been made. Until the new ‘projection’ all maps – like the atlas – had curved lines of longtitude and latitude; it was impossible to draw a straight line on a map that linked two places together. Mercator’s projection created te grid system that we all take for granted today. Wherever you were in the world – near the pole or near the equator – your bit of the world, on the map, was subject to the same sized grid. And, yes, you could draw a line between two points and navigate along it.

Towards the end of his life Mercator produced a series of ‘modern maps’ using this projection. With this series he dispensed with graphics and drawings, concentrating purely on known facts. And – for the first time – his pages of his books of maps were able to overlap, in the way that we all take for granted these days.

Nicholas Crane is known for his travelling – these days mainly for television- but with this book he has produced a masterpiece. The Sunday Times wasn’t hyping things too much when they claimed that “This rich and rewarding biography stands at the peak of Crane’s achievement”.

This is, simply, a wonderful book. Mercator was born in 1512 in one of the German States moving, as a child, to the Low Countries. He studied under the newly established principles of university education laid down by Erasmus. Luckily, a close friend and neighbour wrote a biography of Mercator just after he died and Mercator was a prodigious letter writer. But this is the first biography of the great man that has appeared in English.

Through Crane’s writing we understand the fascination that the young Mercartor had for his maps. We are led through the difficulties of the age as this area of Europe picked its way through the turmoil of the reformation – Mercator was imprisoned by the Inquisition for a while.

For Mercator, the great thing about maps was that they would bring peoples together. But, of course, his – more accurate maps – gave enemy forces details of where they could feed their forces and so on. BBy the time of his death in 1594 Mercator had been celebrated as one of the great minds, and innovators, in the world.

This book though – while it is full of details about the development of Mercator’s maps and the science that surrounded it – is as much a human story about man, his friends and his family, as he struggled to find a safe and secure place in which to further his work.

A lovely book. And if you like maps …

.. you should read it!

Mercator: The man who mapped the planet, is published in paperback by Phoenix Books and costs £9.99