A number of years in the past, James Cheshire, the professor of geographic info and cartography on the College Faculty London (UCL), walked right into a forgotten map room on the campus. On the time he didn’t know he would spend three years on this dusty room, amid 440 bespoke drawers, sorting via the various hitherto ignored maps—some secret and a few not-so secret. The ensuing guide is an beautiful document of the curiosities Cheshire found, and an apt homage to the analogue methods of the world in addition to the significance of cartography.
The 96 “misplaced” maps explored right here span epochs, geographies and geological landscapes. Some threatened to interrupt aside in human fingers, whereas others, tucked away from daylight and human interference for a lot of many years, appeared surprisingly contemporary: a map of Hiroshima printed simply weeks earlier than the atomic bomb was dropped, one other of Madrid used for the Nazi invasion of Spain, and yet one more of the ocean ground. These cartographic gems, alongside Cheshire’s commentary, elevate The Library of Misplaced Maps to a well timed, enlightening and massively entertaining quantity concerning the inexorin a position vitality and significance of libraries as sociopolitical reminiscence keepers.
Cheshire’s background and curiosity in spatial information evaluation and visualisation performs an important function in his choice. An early discover was one in all solely 34 copies of the primary map exhibiting the geology of the entire of the Indian subcontinent. Created by Victorian mapmaker George Bellas Greenough, this massive map turns into doubly pertinent as a result of, as Cheshire observes, Greenough was “one of many first to see the potential for maps as one thing greater than a manner of exhibiting folks the place to go”. The preliminary sketch took Greenough over a decade to create.
Writing concerning the present period of digital maps, Cheshire notes the significance of getting huge quantities of digitised map information accessible for instructing, analysis and associated functions. Not solely is the information handy and simply up to date, however additionally it is unwasteful. As he writes: “The world I inhabit, as a mapmaker, would have been inconceivable to many of the generations earlier than me.” Concerning the way forward for maps and whether or not synthetic intelligence will substitute them altogether, Cheshire reassures his readers with an “emphatic no”. Maps, he says, present us with “the idea for campaigns for cleaner air in cities”; they “disgrace the wealthiest concerning the carbon footprints of their non-public jets”.
Cheshire’s deep appreciation for the artwork of cartography and its marriage with historical past is an ideal mixture. In 2026 most diplomatic coverage conferences start and finish with shows. Knowledge is shared, stories circulated, challenges mentioned. The format, usually chilly, impersonal and display intensive, foregoes encouraging the hands-on participation wanted to deal with the native and private particulars of modern-day points like city planning, peace negotiations, classroom schooling, even routine tourism. The Library of Misplaced Maps reignites the query: what adjustments when individuals are invited not simply to see information, however to work together with it bodily? In connection to this, Cheshire writes concerning the function of maps in the course of the US negotiation within the Paris Peace Convention of 1919. Elucidating the highly effective function a map performs in such circumstances, he writes: “An ethnographic map may transform the attitude of the statesmen concerned within the evaluation of the trade-offs required within the negotiations.”
On a stroll via the Nationwide Postal Museum in Washington, DC, Cheshire wonders why an identical museum can’t be devoted to maps. And rightly so! Maps tie us to our sociopolitical, financial, spatial previous and current; maps are arbiters of the methods humanity has charted its journey; maps “have all of it”. And, for those who look shut sufficient, there actually is a map for everybody.
Exploring the contents of The Library of Misplaced Maps is as shut as most readers will come to dealing with paper maps and their accompanying paraphernalia in our extremely digitised occasions. Cheshire transports us again via time and place, reminding us of our previous whereas guiding us towards our future.
James Cheshire, The Library of Misplaced Maps, Bloomsbury Publishing, 384pp, greater than 100 col. illust., £30 (hb), printed 9 October 2025 Anandi Mishra is a author, critic and communications skilled based mostly in Sweden
