She had bailiffs at the door, her parents were splitting up and then Iggy Pop sent this letter to her and it just changed her life. She had a lot of problems in her childhood. ''I'd seen some letters from him before and they'd been great, really entertaining, but I'd never seen anything as affecting as the one she sent me. ''She emailed me and said, 'I've got this amazing letter from Iggy Pop','' Usher says. Usher also points to Iggy Pop's letter to Laurence, a 21-year-old fan who sent him a letter about her troubled life.

Usher's favourite, ''although that can often change'', is from a lesser-known American copywriter, Robert Pirosh, looking for a job in 1934. Many are unknown individuals whose words reflect momentous change in the world's history or inspire unexpected replies from bodies in high office. Schulz, Fidel Castro, Spike Milligan, Mick Jagger (to Andy Warhol) and Bette Davis, among others. Sad, inspiring, hilarious, ingenious and often deeply affecting, the letters also come from Virginia Woolf, Groucho Marx (to Woody Allen), Annie Oakley, Adolf Hitler's nephew, Patrick Hitler, Leonardo da Vinci, Charles M. Eisenhower, featuring her recipe for drop scones, and Elvis Presley's mid-flight letter to US president Richard Nixon, written in the hope of a personal meeting and the acquisition of a badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Advice for 'chick rockers' by Chrissie Hynde, And many, many more.Letters include musician Iggy Pop's life-changing words to a young female fan, the Queen's missive to US president Dwight D. Michelangelo's illustrated shopping list, 10. Johnny Cash's list of 'things to do today', 9. Martin Luther King's advice for black people starting to use buses, 8.

29-year-old Marilyn Monroe's inspirational set of New Year's resolutions, 7. Einstein's punitive list of conditions imposed on his first wife, 6. Galileo's list of the parts needed to build his telescope, 5. The 19 year-old Isaac Newton's list of the 57 sins he'd already committed, 4. A handwritten list of the BFG's favourite words by Roald Dahl, 3. A shopping list written by two ninth-century Tibetan monks, 2.

In its pages you'll find 125 lists with facsimiles or illustrations, including: 1. Just as he did with Letters of Note, Shaun Usher has trawled the world's archives to produce a rich visual anthology that stretches from ancient times to present day.įrom Leonardo da Vinci's to-do list to Charles Darwin on the pros and cons of marriage or Julia Child's list of possible titles for what would later become an American cooking bible, Lists of Note is a constantly surprising A-Z of what makes us human. They are the shorthand for what really matters to us: our hopes and aspirations likes and dislikes rules for living and loving records of our memories and reminders of the things we want to do before we die. Humans have been making lists for even longer than they've been writing letters.

Shaun usher