Spanning pre-historic times through to the twenty-first century, The Imagination Muscle explores the genesis of ideas - from Thomas Edison's serial embracing of failure to Jane Jacobs' vision of how we should build cities together; from Steve Jobs' approach to office design to the Japanese concept of Ma. Touching on art, music, film, literature, science and entrepreneurship, this book examines how the imagination has evolved - in shape, power and pace - through the millennia. Albert oversees titles and businesses including British Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, and Tatler. In The Imagination Muscle, he shows how the imagination is not merely reserved for artists and creatives, but is a muscle to be trained and developed. He told Chris: “I work in the business of ideas. Conde Nast is a company that thrives on ideas. And we got to keep ideas coming… If you're selling bananas, you want to know where the bananas come from, and so, with us, we need to know where the ideas are coming from.

But the story did not go away. Not for me. Because Jacqueline Dwyer was the woman I was going to marry. Brainstorming on any subject, I’ve discovered, will put my imagination on full alert and keep it there up to 30 minutes afterward. There are prompts on Twit-World. Most are depressingly turgid, but a challenging few stand out.My imagination walked to the broken wall and looked into the opening. I saw immediately what she’d caressed. It was a crude drawing of a fish. As I stared, I heard a commotion behind me. It was a crowd of Roman soldiers, running toward me. For some, the imagination is a luxury in the modern age; something which is at once elusive, difficult to employ and, we assume, better left to others. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. After all, as Read expertly outlines, the imagination is our supreme gift, our biggest opportunity, our greatest source of fulfilment and our most vital asset for the future. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial.

Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? Managing director of Condé Nast Britain, Albert Read joined the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with cinch to talk about his new book, The Imagination Muscle.This would have been simply another dark and strange coincidence, the sort of thing that shows up for a two-minute report on the local news—with live remote from the scene—and maybe gets a follow-up the next day. Eventually the story would go away, fading from the city’s collective memory. Spanning pre-historic times through to the twenty-first century, The Imagination Muscle explores the genesis of ideas – from Thomas Edison’s serial embracing of failure to Jane Jacobs’ vision of how we should build cities together; from Steve Jobs’ approach to office design to the Japanese concept of Ma. Touching on art, music, film, literature, science and entrepreneurship, this book examines how the imagination has evolved – in shape, power and pace – through the millennia. Albert told Chris: “I think that's the lesson we all have to learn is we should all widen our perspectives, read things that we wouldn't necessarily normally read. Read differently, don't read one book and then another book. Read different books at the same time. So there are lots of ideas from history which I think need to be revived and brought to the fore.” The book answers questions such as: What techniques can we use to stimulate imaginative thinking? How can we learn to foster skill in observation and connection? Giving some examples, Albert said: “The obvious ones that we all know about are having ideas in the shower. So, someone like Aaron Sorkin, who writes The West Wing, when he's writing, he has five showers a day, because he keeps his mind going. It loosens the mind, It has this loosening quality, having a shower. Going for long walks, something invented by the Romantic poets. They realised that if you walk, you have ideas. It started with “why did she touch the wall in that spot?”. All I had to do was follow her to find out.

You pass a billboard of a happy family—smiling dad and mom, two laughing kids—at a theme park. Happy to most people, maybe. But: Albert Read reveals how we can harness the imagination in our day-to-day lives and why, in the new Age of Technology, it is more pressing than ever that we do so. Discover where to find ideas, how to foster skill in observation and connection, and how to be more attentive to the fluxes of our own minds.Spanning pre-historic times through to the twenty-first century, The Imagination Muscle explores the genesis of ideas - from Thomas Edison's serial embracing of failure to Jane Jacobs' vision of how we should build cities together; from Steve Jobs' approach to office design to the Japanese concept of Ma. Touching on art, music, film, literature, science and entrepreneurship, this book examines how the imagination has evolved - in shape, power and pace - through the millennia.

Imagination is our most powerful muscle and our greatest source of fulfilment. Find out how to exercise yours with two of the country’s most influential and creative people. What if it is really a man in disguise and he’s on the down low because a contract has been put out on him?

Gift Guide 2023

Beautiful, moving, profoundly imaginative in itself – this book is as entertaining as it is relevant and practical’ ALAIN DE BOTTON