Terence

'Bayley . . . tells the Habitat story with his customary polycultural panache . . . [Mavity is] good at conveying the experience of being in a room with Conran' Sunday TimesTerence Conran: a visionary and a myopic. A Francophile who could not speak French. A democratising idealist and a selfish hedonist. His was a life of contradictions, simultaneously a national figure and an enigma.A design entrepreneur and imaginative restaurateur, his influence is everywhere in modern Britain from where we live to what we eat. He made it his life's work to escape suburban mediocrity, and to help the rest of us escape too.An astonishing life, if not a contented one, Terence leapt from one idea to the next: he was a furniture manufacturer, a hotelier, an author, educator and patron. He married and separated from four women, fathered five children, made several enemies, antagonised countless shareholders, provided thousands, possibly millions, of column inches, and smoked over £1 million worth of cigars.Terence: The Man Who Invented Design is the definitive biography of this design legend, by two of his closest collaborators, Roger Mavity and Stephen Bayley. Frank, witty and revelatory, it tells Terence's story as it evolved, from before Habitat's humble chicken brick to Bibendum's sophisticated poulet de Bresse, via personal successes and corporate calamities, culminating in that peculiar temple to the religion he invented: The Design Museum.Providing an authentic and intimate insight into his life and legacy, Terence celebrates his genius and immeasurable impact on British life - and ensures his rightful status as national treasure.