Ben Schott was born in North London, England on May 26, 1974, the son of a neurologist and a nurse. He has one brother, also now a neurologist. He went to school at University College School, Hampstead — both the junior school in Holly Hill and the senior school in Frognal.
Schott went to Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, where he read Social and Political Sciences. At Cambridge he was a regular photographer for the university student newspaper Varsity . He played college hockey, cricket, and croquet — though not to a very high standard. He was also a member of a number of dining societies, as well as being secretary of the Shakespeare Society — one of the oldest undergraduate societies in Cambridge. He took a double First in 1996.
After Cambridge, Schott got a job at the London advertising agency J. Walter Thompson where he was as an account manager on the Nestlé Rowntree account — working on Smarties, Kit Kat, and Polo. After only four months he resigned to become a freelance photographer.
Schott worked as a photographer from 1996—2003, specialising in portraits of politicians and celebrities. He was commissioned by a range of editorial and commercial clients, including The Independent, The Sunday Times, Sunday Business, Reader’s Digest, and the Institute of Directors. A profile in The Times said "his subjects included John Prescott, who was rude, and Sir Roy Strong, who had “the most wonderful, doleful eyes” and told him: “You must realise I’m awfully photogenic.” Tony Blair asked Schott if he’d like to see then-baby Leo; Cherie barked at him not to take too long as they were about to have lunch.” . His photographic portfolio is online.
As The Guardian wrote of Schott’s Original Miscellany, the first of Schott's three Miscellanies titles, “the idea for the book came from home-made Christmas cards that Schott sent to friends. They were no ordinary cards, but consisted of little booklets containing all of the essential information he supposed that one needed to get through life, but could never find”. Schott typeset the book himself and had 50 copies privately printed by the Pear Tree Press in Stevenage. After sending copies out to his friends, he sent one to the CEO of Bloomsbury, Nigel Newton. As Newton told the Boston Globe, “I was completely bowled over when it arrived on my desk. It was a work of striking originality, and it was remarkable to receive an unsolicited submission like this in the mail. I immediately passed it to one of our editors, who signed it up.”
Schott’s Original Miscellany was published with little fanfare, but an article by Stuart Jeffries on the front page of the Guardian’s G2 section on 6 December 2002 changed everything. Describing the book as the “publishing sensation of the year", the article said that “Schott has hit the list motherlode”. Sales raced up, and within weeks Schott’s Original Miscellany was at No. 1. Robert McCrum said of the book in The Observer: “Originality is like charisma. It's hard to define, but we know it when we find it ... Schott's Original Miscellany is without doubt the oddest, and possibly merriest, title you will come across in a long day's march through the shimmering desert of contemporary publishing”.
Schott followed up the success of the Original Miscellany with two sequels — Schott’s Food & Drink Miscellany and Schott’s Sporting, Gaming, & Idling Miscellany. While both bestsellers (Schott had two books simultaneously in the Sunday Times top ten) — sales did not match the runaway success of the first book. In part this was because of a vast swathe of copycat books designed to look and feel exactly like the Schott formula. One of the most shameless copies was Robson Books' Companion books, which ripped off the Schott style with an entire series.
The Miscellany trilogy has sold well over 2 million copies, and has been translated and adapted into dozens of languages, including French, Russian, Greek, Swedish, Italian, Serbian, Spanish and Japanese.
The first edition of Schott's Almanac was published in Britain in 2005 — now, yearly editions are published in Britain, America, and Germany. The Almanacs share the same look and feel as the Miscellanies — but are substantially longer and larger. Each edition is different, although some content is shared or adapted. The British edition has sections on The World; Society; Media & Celebrity; Music & Movies; Books & Arts; Science & Technology; Parliament & Politics; Form & Faith; The Establishment; Sport; and an Ephemerides section that contains traditional almanac information on dates, moon phases, and the season. The Sunday Times called Schott’s Almanac "a social barometer of genuine historical value”; the Boston Globe called it “One of the oddest and most addictively readable reference books in print”. Schott introduced the 2006 Almanac with a quote from Ben Hecht: “Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock”.
For two years after the publication of the first Miscellany, Schott wrote a weekly miscellany column for The Daily Telegraph, and also produced special miscellany features on Christmas and the Olympics. For over a year he wrote a regular travel miscellany column for the UK edition of Condé Nast Traveler magazine. In 2005 and 2006 the Guardian featured special editions of G2 featuring extracts from Schott’s Almanac.
In 2008 Schott was appointed as a Contributing Columnist for The New York Times OpEd page. He also writes regular features for The Times.
Schott publishes a bespoke Miscellany Diary with the society printers Smythson of Bond Street, and a desk-pad diary with Workman. A range of Miscellany-ware products is in the pipeline.
Schott typesets all of his books and most of his articles — now using Adobe’s InDesign after apparently abandoning QuarkXPress. His books are noted for specifying the precise design tools (fonts, leading, etc.) that he employs. He has regularly acknowledged the influence of the work of Edward Tufte in influencing the look and feel of his books.
The characteristic cover illustrations for his books are created by Alison Lang, and the drawing inside the Almanacs are by Chris Lyon.
In 2004, he won a D&AD award for the design of Schott’s Food & Drink Miscellany.
