Waterstones

Waterstones, formerly Waterstone's, is a British book retailer that operates 275 stores and employs around 3,500 staff in the UK and Europe as of February 2014. Established in 1982 by Tim Waterstone, after whom the company was named, the bookseller expanded rapidly until being sold in 1993 to W H Smith. Bought again in 1998 by Waterstone, EMI & Advent International, the company was taken under the umbrella of HMV Group, which later merged the Dillons and Ottakar's brands into the company.

Following several poor sets of results for the group, HMV put the chain up for sale. In May 2011, it was announced that A&NN Capital Fund Management, owned by Russian billionaire Alexander Mamut, had bought the chain and appointed James Daunt as managing director.

As well as the Waterstones brand, the company owns the London bookseller Hatchards, and Irish shop Hodges Figgis. An average sized Waterstones store sells a range of approximately 30,000 individual books, as well as stationery and eBook readers. The bookseller has concession agreements with Costa Coffee, Starbucks and Paperchase in some stores and since 2012, has introduced its own Café W brand.

Sound design

Sound design is the process of specifying, acquiring, manipulating or generating audio elements. It is employed in a variety of disciplines including filmmaking, television production, theatre, sound recording and reproduction, live performance, sound art, post-production, radio and video game software development. Sound design most commonly involves the manipulation of previously composed or recorded audio, such as sound effects and dialogue. In some instances it may also involve the composition or manipulation of audio to create a desired effect or mood. A sound designer is one who practices the art of sound design.

History

The use of sound to evoke emotion, reflect mood and underscore actions in plays and dances began in prehistoric times. At its earliest, it was used in religious practices for healing or just for fun. In ancient Japan, theatrical events called kagura were performed in Shinto shrines with music and dance.

Plays were performed in medieval times in a form of theatre called Commedia dell'arte, which used music and sound effects to enhance performances. The use of music and sound in the Elizabethan Theatre followed, in which music and sound effects were produced off stage using devices such as bells, whistles, and horns. Cues would be written in the script for music and sound effects to be played at the appropriate time.

Chris Riddell

Chris Riddell (born 13 April 1962) is a British illustrator and occasional writer of children's books and a political cartoonist for The Observer. He has won two Kate Greenaway Medals, the British librarians' annual award for the best-illustrated children's book, and two of his works were commended runners-up, a distinction dropped after 2002. Books that he wrote or illustrated have won three Nestlé Smarties Book Prizes and have been silver or bronze runners-up four times. On 9 June 2015 he was appointed the UK Children's Laureate.

Life

Chris Riddell was born in 1962 in South Africa where his father was a "liberal Anglican vicar" and was opposed to the system of apartheid. The family returned to England when Chris was one year old, where he spent the rest of his childhood with his sister and three brothers who are now living in South Africa, Brighton, England, and Egypt. Chris displayed artistic talent from an early age, and was encouraged in this by his mother. (She gave him paper and pen to keep quiet during father's sermons.) As a child, he admired the work of John Tenniel, the first illustrator of Alice in Wonderland, and W. Heath Robinson. At Brighton Polytechnic he studied illustration; one teacher was Raymond Briggs, an earlier winner of two Greenaway Medals. In 2002 he named as influences Tenniel and E. H. Shepard, the first illustrator of The Wind in the Willows and Winnie the Pooh.