The Steep Atlantick Stream

Robert Harling was a key figure in twentieth-century graphic design, editor before the war of Typography and later House & Garden, which he edited between 1957 until his retirement in 1993, and typographic advisor to the Sunday Times for almost forty years. At the start of the war, and being a keen sailor, Harling joined the RNVR and took part in the Dunkirk evacuation, before serving on Atlantic convoy duty. His close friend Ian Fleming later recruited him to 30AU, known as 'Fleming's Commandos, ' where he spent the rest of the war operating in naval intelligence and on the front line. He is the author of eighteen books, including half a dozen novels, books on typography, architecture and artists such as Eric Ravilious and Eric Gill, and a memoir of his friendship with Ian Fleming. He died in 2008.