Original subtitles

Well, hey, what are you reading?

Do you say "book" or "bauk"?

I say book, but I think it's a bit like potato pot-ah-to.

Well, it's book or bauk, really. What do you say?

I say book.

You're a book? Are you a book person?

I'm not a book person, no.

I want to get into it, but I just, I don't know...

Do you know a really good place to start, right?

Have you got a children's section in here?

Rude.

But most Brits do love a good book.

Every year, we buy over 200 million of them.

Throw in digital and audiobooks,

and you've got an industry worth over £7 billion a year.

So where better to find out how to make a bumper order

of a bestseller...

..than one of the biggest book factories in Europe?

This palace of print in Suffolk is absolutely huge

and it's home to super-sized machinery...

I know I'm a bit of an engineering geek,

but that is seriously impressive.

..that transforms paper...

Whoa!

..into page-turners.

Hot off the press. Here we go.

It's such a bestseller that I've roped in

my factory mucker, Cherry...

I bought you the gift of words.

..to help out.

That is a thing of beauty.

And Ruth Goodman is finding out how a young Frenchman

opened up a whole new world of reading.

So, Dave, when did you learn to read braille?

The big moment for me was when I became a dad

and I wanted to read the bedtime story.

This place knocks out a mind-boggling three million books

every single week.

And we're going to show you just how they do it.

Welcome to Inside the Factory.

This is the Clay's factory in Bungay,

and they've been making books on this very site

for well over 200 years.

Is that a map? Find my way around the gaff.

Across this vast 14 acre site,

more than 850 people work around the clock

seven days a week.

Do you actually print any A-Zs?

Because that will come in...

Right, all right, down here.

The factory combines cutting edge technology

with traditional book-making methods,

printing a mind-blowing 160 million books a year.

From upmarket hardbacks

to holiday paperbacks.

So if a book's appeared on the best seller list,

there's a good chance it was made here.

Oh, aye.

One of their publishers is Penguin Books,

whose Clothbound Classics range

includes novels like Robinson Crusoe, and Dracula.

Hardbacks with a luxurious fabric cover.

Today, we're following production of an all-time favourite.

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice,

brought to you by Bolton's answer to Mr Darcy.

For those of you who haven't read the book,

or seen any of the adaptations on the telly,

it's a love story between the strong-willed Elizabeth Bennet

and one Mr Darcy.

You must have heard of him.

Tall, handsome,

high-vis vest.

It's a classic.

My story begins, not with the arrival of a horse drawn carriage,

but a great big lorry...

..at intake,

where I'm meeting printing general manager David Hancy...

Ey up, Dave! How are you, pal? Are you OK? You all right?

Good to see you.

..who's overseeing the delivery of a crucial component.

So, I've noticed we're indoors.

First time I've seen that with an HGV, doors shut.

Why is that?

So, obviously, paper doesn't like getting wet,

so we always try and unload inside.

The paper is quite well protected,

but we don't want to get the wrappers wet.

You don't want to get it wet? What are these rolls or what?

Yes, these are reels of paper. Reels, right.

And this paper is for our Clothbound Classics.

So these reels, which are like massive toilet rolls,

how many of them are on there?

On there at the moment, there's 46. 46.

How many books is that? About 50,000 books.

50,000?! Yeah, yeah.

Wow! Well, we'd better get them off.

Get 'em off.

As the forklift springs into action,

the clock on my very own production of Pride and Prejudice begins.

These reels of paper for my Penguin Classic...

Nice bit of driving, that.

..were produced in Sweden, and we're following them

into the warehouse on the last stage of their 970-mile journey.

Can't stop doing this, Dave. I like that.

So, Paddy, what we've got here, these reels are a premium paper.

They weigh 750 kilos each.

Each one of these reels will give us

1,380 copies of Pride and Prejudice.

That's a lot of Mr Darcys.

It's a lot.

And if you take this off and roll that paper out,

like a massive Andrex puppy,

how long does it stretch?

This would stretch for 7,600 metres.

So just over 7.5km. Right.

And the reference to Andrex puppy,

other toilet rolls are available.

Right, Dave, you've got the paper out.

Talk me through it, pal.

What we need to do is just look at some samples here. Right.

Just to give you a bit of an idea of what the differences are.

So if you feel that, Paddy.

That's your holiday read. That's right.

That's what we use for our paperback books.

Like you said, Paddy, the stuff you take on holiday,

the stuff you buy at a train station, that sort of stuff.

How thick's that?

That is 115 microns.

I don't even want to sully my hands with that, Dave.

Get rid of that.

The other product is our premium cream paper.

This is a bit of me.

I've got to say, Dave,

and this tells you a lot about the reading material I look at,

I have never, ever felt paper like that on any of the books,

but to be fair, they've all got pictures in.

But I've never felt that quality.

Paddy, this is our premium product.

That's the highest grade paper that we offer here, 140 micron thickness.

So the overall experience is quality.

140 microns.

140 microns.

Now you're talking my... This is a bit of me, this, Dave.

I love a bit of detail.

So the paper in your holiday read

is about as thick as a human hair.

But these extra 25 microns...

Premium cream!

..make a world of difference.

Pride and Prejudice,

we want to print this on a premium product to give the reader

the experience of the book

that they would have read 100 years ago.

Love that.

So it's all about the feel, the thickness, the weight.

Everything about the book is from this paper.

Right. What's next?

Well, we need to get this paper into the factory

and get it on the printing machine.

Go on, mate, I'll follow you.

Lovely stuff.

Premium paper for a top book.

Pride and Prejudice was first printed in 1813

and has been a best seller ever since,

with 20 million copies sold.

Meanwhile, our very own Elizabeth Bennet

is finding out how the factory gets Jane Austen's words onto the page.

She makes a good Elizabeth, does Cherry.

Refined, classy.

Hang on, did Liz wear jeggings?

This place is absolutely enormous

and packed with books.

My idea of absolute heaven.

Right, I think I know where I'm going.

I think it's this way.

To get the text for Paddy's order,

I've been sent to the office above the factory floor...

I'm looking for an Amy.

..to meet account controller, Amy Filsell.

Hi. Hi.

So, Paddy's got the paper...

Yeah.

..I need some words because, without the words,

he's just got a lot of loo roll. Exactly.

And I've got them. You've got the words? I have.

Here we've got Penguin, and they will come to me with their order.

They've sent the PDF across to us.

So, what's the next stage after this?

What we do is, we check the order.

So as we can see here, we've got 480 pages.

Tick. It's got the right amount of pages. Yeah.

And for this printing, they've requested 20,000.

Sounds a lot. Is that a lot or not very much?

Yeah, it is a huge amount.

And especially because it's the 66th printing.

For this batch of Austen's classic,

the factory uses computer software...

..and something called an imposition

to take the words from the PDF and prepare them for printing.

I don't want to be an imposition, but what is an imposition?

So the imposition is a process where we put the pages in a specific order

to make sure that, when the pages are printed and folded,

they're all in order.

Surely the order is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

and continue?

So can you work out this? Whoa!

The way the pages are laid out for printing...

Someone can't count.

Look at that.

..is completely different to the order you'd find in a book.

462, 19, 1, 3.

The computer has taken the 480 pages from the PDF and arranged them

to print on Paddy's 1.2 metre wide rolls of paper,

in what looks like a totally random order.

I've got 16 pages here, but as you can see, they're not in order.

We've got pages on the back.

Oh, it's all out of... it's all over the place.

All over the place.

What we do, once we've printed the text and we fold, fold again.

Once it's then cut, it's all in order.

It's like magic.

CHERRY GASPS

When printing on an industrial scale,

it's far faster and more economical

to print on large sheets of paper,

which are then folded and cut.

So you can't do 1, 2, 3, 4,

because then, if you fold it,

it'll be 1, 16, 5, 200.

Exactly.

So you need to have pre-thought about

where those numbers are going to sit once it's folded. Exactly.

What a puzzle!

To produce the 480 pages of our book

requires a total of ten different impositions.

Back in the day, it would have taken a lot of time and careful thought.

The system has done it all for us.

It would take me my entire lifetime to figure out 480 pages.

There would be no Jane Austen.

In fact, there'd be no books at all!

Until the 1880s, books were printed

with metal typesetting blocks of text,

which had to be arranged by hand,

a slow and laborious process.

Today, our factory uses a much faster method called "lithography"

which substitutes individual typesets for large sheets

of 0.3 mm thick aluminium called plates.

In charge of transferring the text from our impositions

to the plates is Ivan Adcock.

Ivan, lovely to meet you. Hello, Cherry.

So now we're ready to make a plate in our enormous machine.

Would you like to give me a hand? Yes, please.

To your body. The body.

Bring it round.

Easy does it.

Drop the middle down.

Gosh!

So, we're going to put words onto these plates?

We are indeed.

Why is one side shiny

and the other side a matte turquoise colour?

Because it's a sheet of aluminium with a photosensitive coating on it,

which can be altered by a laser.

OK.

So we're going to push it into the machine.

Smooth. All right.

And slowly... Bosh!

"Bosh" indeed.

Is it super-fast?

It's super-fast.

The old-fashioned typeset method

would have taken ten days

to prepare the text for our novel,

whilst this machine transfers

the 124,713 words

of Pride and Prejudice in just 20 minutes.

Oh, look, it's here!

The laser bakes the blue thermosensitive polymer

onto the aluminium in the shape of the text,

which will attract the ink during the printing process...

..whilst the rest of the blue layer

is washed away by specialist chemicals and then with water.

There are words on this plate.

The plate now contains the 48 pages

from the first of ten impositions,

and will be used to print our order

of 20,000 books.

So if you get it wrong at this stage...

We'll get it wrong 20,000 times.

I mean, there's so much pressure on you. Yes.

So, where does this perfect plate now go?

It's going to go on the trolley and then be taken down to press.

Are we then done?

No, we've got another nine plates to make.

Another nine to do? Yeah.

Let's get on with it. OK.

The remaining nine plates

will complete the 124,000 words,

give or take, you'll need to print our book, Paddy.

That's a lot of words!

While you crack on with the plates, Cherry,

my giant reels of top quality paper

are trundling through the factory...

..to reel loading...

OK, Paddy. Oh, my gosh.

..where Dave's got a REEL...

Steady as she goes.

..sorry, challenge for me...

Oh, nearly.

Nearly, Paddy.

Here we go again.

..loading the paper into position...

Oh, no, the other side now, Dave.

What are you doing to me?

..ready for printing.

Come on, let's be having you. Here we go.

That's perfect.

Jane Austin would be proud.

Come on, Dave.

So, that's the enormous reel sorted.

But where do we turn plain paper...

..into Pride and Prejudice?

Wow, look at that!

I know I'm a bit of an engineering geek,

but that is seriously impressive.

This high-tech Hulk is the biggest printing machine in the place.

It is actually staggering.

It's 18 metres long, six metres high,

and weighs 100 tons.

That's eight double decker buses.

What would Jane Austen make of this?

So, Paddy, this is one of our 16 printing presses.

This one is the most advanced, the biggest,

the fastest and the newest.

This machine is capable of producing

960 pages a second. Wow!

So, technically, we can print one copy of that book in half a second.

Hang on, one copy of Pride and Prejudice in when?

Half a second.

My word, that is proper...

I can't... You can't get your head round that.

So, this particular order is for 20,000 copies, Paddy.

This machine will get all of that done in four hours.

What we need to do is show you.

Let's go and get the plates.

With Cherry? Yeah.

Oh, have you met her? No.

Dave, word of advice.

Never look into her eyes.

Here she is.

Hey, you!

Hello, Cherry!

I've bought you the gift of words,

but it took me ages. It was really complicated.

Can you please look after it?

I'll look after it.

On your way out, I've got my eye on a Jackie Collins.

Save it for me. All right, have fun.

Thank you. Here we are, Dave.

There she goes.

The plates are loaded into their own special lift...

Got to say, Dave, lovely casters.

..because they're too big to go up the stairs.

Not a problem for me and Dave, though.

We're at the heart of the press now.

The machine will guide the plate on, and it clamps that plate

onto the cylinder using the bends that you can see on the plate.

Oh, there she goes.

So it's now clamped the front part of the plate,

and then it'll take it in.

It'll push the back part of the plate in, clamp it

and then we're ready to print. Beautiful!

Ten plates are needed to print Pride and Prejudice.

And they're loaded up in sets of two.

The first is attached to a cylinder here above the press,

and it's pair to a second cylinder below.

And the bendy plates will then wrap around the cylinders.

Is it printing on both sides at the same time? Absolutely.

So, on this plate, we've got 48 pages of text. Right.

The plate below, which will go on at the same time,

has got 48 pages of text.

And what we'll do, we'll print together.

So, as the paper comes below our feet,

we print on both sides, 48 and 48.

So, plates are loaded, paper's loaded.

When are we going to start doing a bit of printing?

That's what we need to do now, Paddy,

we need to go downstairs and make a start.

About time, Dave.

Oh, yes! Love this, Dave.

Absolutely.

So, what we're going to do now, we're going to get printing, Paddy.

We're going to start everything up.

It's going to get incredibly loud, that's why we've got these on.

Yeah. So, we're ready, here we go.

Exciting.

Are we going to get covered in ink?

No, we should be all right. Right.

I don't mind a bit on top of the head to cover the greys.

OK, now we're printing.

Oh, here they go!

Look at that!

Wow!

We're printing 48 pages here,

and we're printing another 48 pages

on the other side of the paper as well.

Absolutely mind-blowing.

My word!

The pages of my books are whizzing past

at an incredible 40,000 pages a minute.

Ah, typo.

This is amazing,

but I want to see how you actually get it down on the page.

That's where we're going to go next, Paddy.

So, we'll head upstairs and we'll explain it to you.

After you, sir.

It's a complicated process, so Dave's set up a little demo...

Ah!

..a simplified version of what's going on

inside the massive printing press.

Our props include an aluminium plate,

smaller than the ones in the machine,

with just one gorgeous word written on it.

So, Paddy, because we can't look inside the machine

when it's running, we thought we'd get you to do

a demonstration on how lithography actually works.

Lithography is all about water...

Yeah.

..and ink, which is oil-based. Right.

We've got our water

and we've got our ink.

First thing we need to do is emulate what's happening on the machine.

So, we need you to get some of this ink

and get that onto this rubber roller

and we can get it in the same condition

that it'll be on the machine. OK, Paddy?

I've got to ask you, if you ever want to get out this industry,

Blue Peter. Blue Peter.

This is fantastic, pal, I'm all over this.

Look at that. Get it on.

That's enough, Paddy. Oh, plenty. Oh, right, OK.

So we'll turn it on.

Oh, love that.

On there with that? That's right.

So this just lifts off... Yeah.

..and all we want you to do is roll that over there nicely

and make that all nice and inky.

Just like inside the printing press,

the rubber roller applies a layer of ink to the aluminium plate.

Look at that.

Obviously we've got our ink on here now

but the ink has just gone everywhere.

In this container here, Paddy, we've got our water.

We want you to lightly clean that ink off.

Oh, it's coming.

Oh, I see it.

The oil-based ink clings to the blue text part of the plate

due to a special chemical coating,

but the water is repelled.

So we've got the inky part on, Paddy,

and the grey area around the plate is literally cleaning off

because the ink is only staying on the blue parts.

I honestly would never have believed it until I seen it,

that you could wipe that ink off and it would stay on that bit.

What we need to do now is apply some paper to it.

Yeah, straight on? Straight on.

And then we just need to apply some pressure to it.

Bit of that, light. Perfect.

So we now pull that off.

Right. Oh, there she is.

So what you can see there is, there's a problem.

Wrong way round.

Wrong way round, yeah.

Luckily, the clever press has an extra process

that prints our books the right way around.

So, inside the machine, Paddy, that plate that we looked at earlier

has been in contact with a rubber roller.

Here we have a sample of that... Yeah.

..rubber.

We're going to print onto this rubber sheet.

Instead of the plate printing straight onto paper,

giving us back to front text,

the ink is applied onto a large rubber cylinder,

which then transfers it onto our paper the right way around.

Here you are, pal.

OK, so we now flip this over.

What we're going to do now is put another sheet of our paper

onto here. Right.

Once again... Firm pressure.

..a little bit of pressure.

That's what we want. Beautiful.

All right, Paddy.

I want that framed in here when I leave, Dave.

I want you to take that home and put it on your fridge.

Right, OK, I will do! Yeah!

And to think, all of that is happening inside the press

at a rate of 40,000 pages a minute.

Let's get these off, Dave, and give these a little wash, eh?

Let's go this way.

Can't see a thing with these.

Right.

After all that, I need a break.

While you lot join Ruth, who's finding out how people

with sight loss can enjoy books like Pride and Prejudice.

I'm in search of a fantastic story

about a young Frenchman in the 19th century,

whose legacy has changed the lives of millions.

If there's one thing that almost all of us take for granted,

it's our eyesight,

the ability to read words

and immerse ourselves in stories,

which is why this is so vital.

This system of raised dots, called braille,

allows you to read by touch.

To find out the origins of braille,

I'm meeting Dave Williams...

Hello, Dave.

..chair of the Braillists Foundation.

Nice to meet you.

So, Dave, you've been blind since birth.

When did you learn to read braille?

Oh, when I was very young.

I went to a specialist school in the 1980s,

and I really didn't recognise its value

until I became an adult and

I guess the big moment for me

was when I became a dad, and I wanted to read the bedtime story.

And before braille, what on earth would it have been like

for somebody who was blind in, say, I don't know...

1800?

Your career options would have been fairly limited.

You might have been taught some crafts, like, you know,

basket weaving or something like that, but a lot of blind people

would just kind of go out begging,

you know, and that was the truth of it.

By the early 19th century,

there had been attempts to create books for blind people,

such as this copy of the Bible using raised standard lettering.

A lot of these letters feel very similar to me.

So, like, a Q and an O would feel very similar, a 5 and an S,

so this would be very, very slow to read.

So when does this change start to happen between something

that is just big raised type into something that works better?

The real breakthrough

was a young French schoolboy,

Louis Braille.

When he was very young,

Louis had an accident.

Subsequently, he lost all his eyesight

and was sent away to be educated in Paris.

And he was a very bright and intelligent boy.

While still in school,

Louis devised a new system

of up to six raised dots,

which could fit perfectly under a fingertip.

And combinations of those six dots can be used to represent

any letter of the alphabet.

The letter B, it's just two dots above each other,

so you can feel that.

And then you've got the letter Y which is five dots kind of arranged.

And you can feel the differences between the characters instantly.

And he did this while he was still a teenager?

Yeah, he was 16 years old

when he developed braille

and obviously struggled to get it adopted straight away.

I mean, yeah, who's going to listen to a 16-year-old?

Well, right.

Braille wasn't officially adopted in France until 1854,

two years after Louis died at the age of 43.

And it wasn't until 1870 that it was formally recognised in Britain,

championed by a man called Thomas Armitage.

So, who was this Thomas Armitage?

He was a physician, but sadly he began to lose his eyesight

and had to stop practising.

And after a period of recuperation,

he wanted to help other blind people,

so he visited many blind people in their homes to find out

about the challenges that they were facing at that time.

And one of the challenges was access to the written word.

So, in 1868, he founded an association which became RNIB.

By the 1860s, there were multiple competing reading methods,

so Armitage convened a panel of finger readers to choose

the best reading and writing system for the whole blind community.

Hello.

Here we are.

And 150 years later, we're testing some of these methods with students

from the Royal National College for the Blind in Hereford.

So what do you make of yours, Nafis?

I just cannot make head or tail of what it is.

This is like an alien language, sort of.

The beauty of braille lay in its clarity.

Most of the alternatives use their own set of 26 characters,

which could be difficult to tell apart by touch.

You've got all sorts of different shapes,

whereas braille, you've just got the six dots.

The Armitage Committee came to the same conclusion,

deciding that braille is best in 1870.

The 1890s saw the invention of braille-based writing machines.

In the following decades,

typewriters were adopted by schools for the blind.

And 100 years later, braille has been adapted for the 21st century.

So, you can use this device the same as a laptop,

and I can read what I've done.

Where those little white dots are?

Yes, I could run a finger over there and instantly be able to pick it up.

There's so many ways of having voice activated devices these days.

Do we think braille has a place in the future?

Absolutely.

It always will, I think. I think always.

The world would be a totally different place

without braille, I think.

16-year-old Louis Braille's invention is now employed globally

in 133 different languages.

And it remains not only relevant,

but essential, whether you need to write an email or write a book.

What an amazing story!

A world of reading opens up through the fingertips.

Back in the book factory...

Look at that!

I'll just find out what book it is.

Oh, I can't quite see it.

..we're two hours into the production of my 20,000 copies

of Pride and Prejudice.

The plates are spinning at an incredible 9.5 times a second,

producing nearly ten million pages for my batch

of 20,000 books.

To feed the beast,

720 metres of paper are passing through the press every minute.

That's about 300,000 words a second.

But the sheet's over 120 cm wide...

My word!

..far too big for a bedtime read.

Look at that!

So it needs chopping into something more manageable.

This part of the machine does a very important role.

So, that big sheet of paper you saw downstairs, Paddy,

we're now cutting that into three ribbons here, putting them

all on top of each other.

And that's the start of putting all the pages in the right order

for the book.

The engineering, the speed,

everything about it is mind-blowing to me.

So, Paddy, the three ribbons here are all travelling off

in this direction and going into the folder.

This is where Cherry's imposition puzzle comes into play.

Inside the folder,

the ribbons of paper are cut into two 55-centimetre-long sheets.

Then they're placed on top of each other,

creating a six sheet stack which is then folded in half...

..and folded in half again,

giving us a 24-sheet booklet called a section.

And with text on both sides of the paper,

that means a total of 48 pages...

..all at a rate of 600 sections a minute.

Oh, beautiful!

Coming out like this, all folded up, all pristine, all in order,

that is an absolute treat to see.

But can I pick one of them up and just...?

I trust you, but can I just double check?

Absolutely, Paddy. Help yourself.

Any one I want? Any one you want.

I've always wanted to do this.

Hot off the press, here we go.

Pride and Prejudice. There it is.

Yep, Jane Austin.

Some are upside down, though, at the top.

Let's take this sheet over here and we'll show you how it works.

Right.

Not another convoluted demo, is it, Dave?

What I'm struggling to get my head around here, Dave,

is, we've got page 391 and then page 6 above it.

How is it getting put in the right order?

Basically, Paddy, this is two books.

Hang on. That's two books together?

That's two books together.

We're printing one book here and here is a completely different book.

This is what we call head-to-head printing.

So doing it this way means it takes half the time to bind the book.

Dave, this whole process is absolutely mind-boggling.

I were looking at it there, going,

"Hang on, why is the introduction next to 397?"

So we have the first 48 pages

and the last 48 pages of the book.

All that will become much clearer, Paddy,

when you go through and see it being put together in the bindery. Right.

Dave, sticking on the paper theme,

why don't we go and find a paper cup,

put a teabag in it and some hot water,

a bit of milk, sit down for a bit?

I think that's a great idea.

Come on, I'll take that with us. We'll have a little read.

Just like Elizabeth and Darcy's relationship,

making books is a complicated affair.

We've got our words printed on the page,

but how do we actually see them?

Time for Cherry to get a lesson on the science of sight.

There's nothing better than getting stuck into a good book,

but I'm guilty of taking my eyes for granted.

So I'm hoping optician Rupen Hirani can help me

understand how they work.

Hello, Rupen, lovely to meet you.

Lovely to meet you, too.

I absolutely love reading, but I've always wondered,

how do your eyes read the words on the page?

So the most important thing about seeing and reading is light.

Without light,

you're not going to be able to detect anything from your eyes.

Don't try reading in a dark room, it's not going to work.

So I can use this model to show you.

So, imagine the eye cut into half.

No, thank you!

As light first approaches the eye,

it strikes this tissue called the cornea.

And that makes up this clear dome that sits on the front of the eye.

After passing through the cornea,

the light then travels through the pupil

before hitting the lens.

The lens changes in length,

altering how the light is focused

onto the retina at the back of the eye.

What does the retina look like?

I can show you.

Come and take a seat just at this machine here. OK.

So what do these amazing machines do?

So this one in particular is going to allow us

to take a photo of your retina.

So it's like a huge, fancy camera? Yeah, pretty fancy.

So when you're ready, if you'd place your chin on that chin rest.

So I can see what looks like Space Invaders.

Rupen is using a retinal imaging camera,

increasingly common in opticians,

to look at the back of my eye.

So this is an image of your retina.

That's the layer at the bottom there

where all your light receptor cells are.

So, I'm now looking at the part of my body that helps me to see.

Correct.

When we read, our eyes take in the light from the white background

around the black words,

and this hits the light receptor cells on the retina.

These receptors transform the light into electrical impulses

which pass along the optic nerve running from the retina

to our brain, which turns the impulses into words.

When we're looking at the individual words and scanning through,

we're not actually going letter by letter.

We're scanning the page continuously with small, rapid eye movements.

If you look at my eyes when I'm reading, you'll see

there's micro movements going on as I read down the paragraph.

It's not smooth at all.

It's really stoppy-starty.

Our brain will perceive the image nice and smooth.

It'll paint it all together.

Our brain gets better at recognising words

the more we read,

which increases reading speed.

But what happens as we age?

Many of us find our eyes struggle to focus -

but why?

With time, the lens within the eye becomes less and less flexible.

So, you can see here, it's quite soft and jelly-like.

With time, it gets stiffer and stiffer, and it gets to a point

where it's rock hard, and we label it crystallised.

No! It will actually crystallise?

So, just like all the collagen in our body,

it loses its elasticity and, unfortunately, will become stiff

and won't be able to focus at all.

People start to notice symptoms of it when you're in your mid-30s,

and it intensifies when you're in your early 50s.

We will all faced this blur as we get older,

called presbyopia.

It's sometimes also known as age-related long-sightedness.

The lens can't adjust as well as it once did to focus.

So, it means the light doesn't fall onto the retina itself,

but it falls slightly behind it.

This means an out-of-focus image is sent to our brain -

unless, of course, we succumb to specs.

We can use a convex lens, which is thicker in the centre,

which will bend the light more so,

and make up for the deficit of your natural lens,

and make sure that light hits the retina.

So, glasses can help focus the light to the correct part of my eye,

making sure that image is clear? Yeah.

So, the need for reading glasses will eventually affect most of us.

But there are some things that can be done to help,

or at least delay the inevitable.

How do I look after my eyes as I get older?

Protecting your eyes from UV is key,

so this lens actually becomes stiffer faster

with more UV exposure.

So, good UV-protection sunglasses?

Absolutely. Anything else?

Making sure, from a young age, you develop good habits like

taking regular breaks from reading, not holding things too close,

which puts a lot of strain on your eye muscles.

Including phones? Including phones.

And, especially at night, make sure your lights are on.

So, once you've had your eyes checked,

the most important thing for reading is good light.

It's no coincidence that opticians are busiest in the autumn,

when shorter days and darker evenings cause people to realise

their eyes are straining.

So, how are my eyes doing?

Well, you don't need glasses just yet.

There are small changes that are happening,

but it's something we'll just monitor regularly for you.

Something to keep an eye on? Absolutely.

Pass with flying colours.

Good to see, Cherry.

I have to admit, I'm not seeing this book making-process too clearly.

It's an impressive business - but, my word, it's complicated.

All ten sections are printed and folded -

and now, it's time to get them shifted to

the next stage of production.

But, unlike Mr Darcy, I'm not too proud to ask for help.

I've got to know what that is.

What's your name, sorry? Charlotte. Charlotte. Paddy.

Nice to meet ya. Nice to meet you.

Thanks for letting me have a go on your sucker. Yeah, all right!

So, like that, Charlotte.

Welcome to the future, everyone!

And how do I get it off?

Push this down. Down.

Yeah, and then, pull this bit up, there you go.

I'm getting one. Charlotte...

..that's been the highlight of my day.

Thank you very much. Welcome! I'll hand it back over.

Love that. Thank you.

I could stay here all day.

But I'm bound for the bindery -

where my sections will be joined together to become books.

I'm meeting bindery manager Dean Notley.

Ey up, Dean. How are you, fella? Hello, Paddy. You OK?

How are you? I'm good, thanks,

but please tell me your bit is a little less complicated than Dave's.

Well, I can't give you any guarantees for that,

but we'll take you through the process. All right.

Just follow me over the steps. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh! Lovely technique, Dean.

I like that. Down there.

Lovely action.

Great. So, this part of a binding line is called the gatherer.

As you can see, we've got over 20,000 text sections

for Pride and Prejudice laid out on the back of a gatherer. Yeah.

This is section one -

which I believe you helped produce.

This whole side, compared to what I've just been doing with Dave,

feels a little bit more old school.

These binding lines haven't really changed much

over the last few decades. Yeah.

The speeds have increased slightly.

The first thing we have to do on the gatherer is these guys

load in section one onto the belt.

That is then fed into what we class as a gatherer box.

This is the first of the ten sections I saw emerging

from the folding machine,

and they're still joined top to tail as two books.

We have a drum with a couple of grippers on there,

which then pulls it down into the tray at the bottom.

I can see it there.

It then goes on to section two.

So, section two is fed in the same. Yeah. It's fed through.

That goes on to section two.

This is section three.

I was going to say...

I bet you the next one's four.

DEAN CHUCKLES Oh, I'm getting it now, Dean.

You're getting it now. I'm getting it now.

Section three, section four, section five, section six.

We're getting to the end here, now.

Getting to the end here, this is section ten,

which then means that your book has been fully collated.

And then, if we look down here, I'll show you what we mean.

Oh.

So, there we have your collated book with the ten sections.

Look at that! That's the first time I've seen it all together like that.

Yeah.

Now, you've got your ten sections,

but obviously, you've got one book there - this is two, innit?

So, there's two books in one section.

So, you've got the one book there, and the other book here.

Let me show the people at home.

See, there? And then, we go...

Amazing!

When does it actually get chopped in half, where it's just one book?

Well, that's further down the process.

Come on, Dean, let's get to it.

Dave assured me his method of printing two books at once

makes the bindery process twice as fast.

So, let's check it out, Dean.

First - two coloured sheets, called end papers,

are glued to the back and front.

The spine of the book is trimmed,

a layer of adhesive is applied,

followed by a strip of material called crepe,

which helps the glue hold the pages together.

Finally, the two books are separated.

A saw cuts them in half, forming single volumes,

at a rate of 7,000 an hour.

And the edges of the pages are trimmed.

Oh-ho-ho!

And here they come...

Look at that!

..five to a pile, my beautiful books.

This is the first time I've actually seen a book...

Yeah. ..without another bit stuck on the end. Yeah.

So, that's the shape everybody recognises.

I'm dying to pick one up, but I can't, can I?

You can, yeah. Oh! Here we...

Ohh! Now, then.

This is... This feels lovely.

Still warm. Nearly a complete book.

Everything's looking tickety-to-boo.

The only thing that's missing - cover.

Actually, we call them cases, Paddy.

"Cases?" Cases.

That's right, Paddy.

Paperbacks have covers,

hardback books have cases.

And I'm definitely on the case.

In this magical factory of books,

deep down in the basement

is a wonderful land exploding with colour.

Our Penguin Classics have a luxury finish covered in vibrant fabric.

King of this domain is binding manager Alfie Boggis.

Alfie, lovely to meet you. Hi. Nice to meet you.

All of these rolls that you see here

are what we use for the actual Clothbound Classic series.

So, you'll see a range of different colours here, we've got 32 in total.

So, we'll be using this one today,

which is called an olive green.

Oh, that's such an amazing colour, it's beautiful.

The 100-metre-long roll of cloth is a durable fibre, called rayon,

made in Holland from wood pulp...

..and dyed to create a fabric with a paper backing.

So, where do we start? First, we need to cut this cloth.

OK. So, if you'd like to pick that roll up and come with me.

Really? Me?

No probs. Brilliant. No probs.

In charge of the 48-year-old cloth-cutting machine is Gary West.

How do we cut a book cover?

If you pull this handle, here, I'll put it into gear. Into gear?

Are we doing a driving lesson? Er, cutting a book.

Press the green button.

Off she goes!

Six sharp steel discs cut down firmly every second.

Is she basically a massive, fancy guillotine?

Pretty much, yeah. OK.

The 135-centimetre-wide cloth

is cut into smaller rectangles.

34 centimetres by 23.

Oh, look, you've got the beginning of our book cover. We have, yep.

One roll is sliced into 1,500 covers.

But cloth alone is not enough.

We're making a hardback book,

so we need some backing from Adi Stokes,

who runs a machine called the case maker...

..where soft cloth and stiff board come together

to form our book cover.

All right, let's feed the case maker.

And there she goes!

The cloth enters the machine and is glued on a roller.

Sheets of board are fed in from the other side,

along with a more flexible paper spine.

The cloth is folded and glued around the inside edge of the board.

And there we go! Finished case.

That is beautiful. It's so warm.

Hot off the press - you can see all the corners that are folded in.

It's glued perfectly, it's folded perfectly,

but it is missing a few bits.

That is a short read, isn't it?

Yeah, so there's a little bit of magic that needs to happen now.

Where do we go to get the magic? Go to the blocker. OK!

Davina Cattermole is the wizard

who adds the glittering design

and that all-important title.

Davina! Hello, Cherry.

These are missing a few bits. Yep, I can help you with that.

Load 'em on the belt. All right.

The text and imagery are printed onto the fabric

with material called "foil".

Hold these two green buttons together.

Double buttons? Double buttons.

Best day ever!

Oh, wow! Look at that!

So, I can see that the covers are being picked up and moved into here.

Is this like a big stamp?

Yeah, so we're actually stamping an image into the cloth here.

The layer of foil is fed between the cover below

and a heated stamp above.

The cover is pushed up against the stamp,

transferring the design onto the olive cloth -

a process called blocking.

This is an example of the brass I've got stuck up on the hotplate.

So, this is what you use to stamp each cover? Yep.

That is a thing of beauty. It is.

Look at the detail!

Do you know what?

This is actually a work of art all on its own, isn't it? It is.

The highlight of this design is an intricate column of elegant swans.

Oh, look!

Does that get the Davina stamp of approval? It sure does.

Wow, it's perfect.

Not a dodgy swan, look at that. No dodgy swan there.

That's a very happy gaggle of swans, isn't it?

That is, ready for production. Wow! Thank you so much.

Alfie, look! All the magic.

Who came up with that design? It's so beautiful.

So, Coralie Bickford-Smith is the actual designer for the book.

And why swans? The designer will actually read the novel.

I think it just, it's the pride that runs throughout the book.

So, the swan represents the pride... Pride, yes.

..in the Pride and Prejudice? Exactly right.

Pride and Prejudice was one of the first Clothbound Classics

designed back in 2008.

I mean, look at it. It's so beautiful!

Who wouldn't want to have that in your house, on your shelf?

That is a work of art in itself.

It certainly is, Cherry.

And you shouldn't judge a book by its cover,

but that's a ten out of ten.

Cherry's done a grand job there -

so I'm on my way from the bindery...

..to the finishing area,

to meet her.

Ah, here she is!

They've kept you busy today! What have they had you doing?

I know, look at this.

Look at this. Love that.

Oh, beautiful. So complicated!

Isn't that amazing? That is absolutely stunning.

So, the swan represents the pride in Pride and Prejudice.

It's really good. I appreciate all your hard work today.

I just give you so much. Thank you.

But now, I'd like you to clock off, and I'm going to take all the glory.

Are you on the case?

I've got it covered. Oh, my God!

Have that.

I reckon this could be the last chapter of my book production,

with binding and distribution manager, Paul Bullen.

Ey up, Paul. Hello, Paddy. You all right, pal?

I've seen the cases, they look absolutely magnificent.

I feel as though we're at the final third act here.

The last bit. Yeah.

We're now going to apply the cases

that Cherry would've seen being made earlier today.

This is like a big moment in the whole process, this, Paul,

because it's all got to marry together now. Yeah.

This is the time when it all comes together, the final product. Yeah.

Yes! And we're getting near now

to what I like to call

the birth of the book. PAUL CHUCKLES

We're in the operating theatre,

"One more push! One more push!

"It's coming!" Yeah. Love that.

For the final push, my books are carried into a machine

called "the splitter".

Sounds painful.

But all it does is open the book in half,

so the end papers of each get an even coating of glue

before they're inserted into their cases.

Further along, a pair of rollers apply pressure to both sides

of the book, ensuring everything is glued tightly together.

As they come off all the way round,

we will then go to this section.

Aha-ha! And here we are. Yes!

At last!

Do you want to have a look at one? Yes, I do.

There she is, Paddy, completed. Thank you, Paul. Oh, look at that.

Beautiful! Do you know, right from the beginning,

it's a long and technical process,

but the paper, the premium cream,

everything in the right order,

all the chapters where they should be,

and that beautiful case...

Just like the story of Pride and Prejudice,

it's all come together perfectly.

It's a work of art, that.

And I think, now, I've got a new appreciation of books.

That is fantastic.

Thank you very much, Paul. You're a gentleman, sir.

Thanks, Paddy. Right.

I'll, er, go and have a read.

PAUL CHUCKLES In a bit.

In keeping with the famous first line of this classic book,

it's a truth universally acknowledged

that all roads lead to dispatch.

And before I go home,

it's only right I should escort my copies off the premises.

Oh, fantastic.

Helping me is distribution manager Ian Hardy.

You all right, Ian? Good, thanks, yourself?

He's in charge of this massive warehouse

that can contain up to five million books at a time.

Here we go, look at that!

Is that lorry just full of our books?

So, Paddy, down there, you've got your 20,000 books for your order.

20,000! But, as well as that, there'll be another 20-30,000

of other titles on there to fill the lorry.

Do you know what amazes me?

Obviously, Pride and Prejudice,

it's a classic,

but it's not exactly a new book,

so 20,000, who's even buying them?

10,000 of these are going straight out to the US.

The US can't get enough of these titles.

They love a classic.

The other 10,000 will go straight from here

to our publisher's distribution warehouses,

and they'll be distributed nationally from there.

So long, Mr Darcy.

Keep the classics alive.

Thank you very much, Ian. Thank you, Paddy.

Right! My work here is done.

13-and-a-half hours after I took delivery

of those massive rolls of paper...

..my copies of Pride and Prejudice are leaving the printers.

From the factory in Suffolk,

our love story travels

to a distribution centre in Essex,

before heading out to bookworms all over the UK.

And our classic tale is enjoyed across the world,

from the USA to Australia.

Well, that was a very complicated process,

but it was amazing to see the craftsmanship, attention,

and care given

to a 200-year-old love story.

And long may it continue.