Nick Dykes

An illustrated story of the relationship between mapping and secrecy, charting the role maps played in concealing and revealing knowledge across centuries. Is there anything more intriguing than a secret map? One that reveals clandestine information or meanings, or a map that is itself a secret? Secret Maps features over one hundred examples of these kinds of maps, connected by their varied relationships to secrecy, and ranging from the twelfth to the twenty-first centuries and across the globe. They include views into state secrecy and power--such as maps used for domestic and military purposes, imperial expansion, espionage, and surveillance as well as those with private or commercial uses, such as charts of private land, trade routes, or the flights of private jets. The maps span widely in their scope and cover issues of broad interest, from old-fashioned spying to contemporary concerns about technology and privacy. As illuminating as it is thrilling, Secret Maps unearths the once-hidden routes, landscapes, and locations that have covertly shaped our world.

Secrets and maps are a match made in heaven. A Second World War military plan of a cave system covered with red stamps, a tatty hand-drawn treasure map marked with an ‘X’, or even your personal phone screen showing a precise ‘blue dot’ location. These maps contain confidential, coded, precious or private locational information and have, as a result, been hidden away or even falsified to preserve the advantage of ownership. This beautifully illustrated and deeply original book tells the story of how maps, secrets and the data they betray, have come together in western culture over the past six centuries. It uncovers the key clandestine workings of imperial secrets, state secrecy, wider secrets within societies and more recent concepts of personal privacy. Combining the intrigue, excitement and danger that drives human fascination with secrets and the peculiar revelatory thrill that maps give us, it is an essential story with an unsettling edge.