Following his training in typographic design at the London College of Printing, James Clough moved from London to Milan in 1971 and pursued a career in typography, lettering and calligraphy. In 1991 he was a founding member of the Associazione calligrafica Italiana and in 2016 he was convenor of an international conference in Milan on the future of handwriting. For the past thirty years he has deepened his knowledge of the history of writing, type and the graphic arts and he has lectured on these subjects in Italy and various European countries as well as the USA. Besides his many articles and lectures on Bodoni, Clough is the author of Alphabets of Wood, a history of Italian wood type, and Signs of Italy. From 2016 to 2019 the Italian newspaper La Repubblica published his Sunday column on historical and modern Italian inscriptions and signs. In 2021, as a member of the Nebiolo History Project, he gave a talk for the Herb Lubalin Lecture Series on Microgramma and Eurostile and another on Bodoni.