The press was still warm¹ when the first proofs came off the bed. Nobody in the room spoke; the sheets were held up to the window one by one, the way a jeweller holds a stone.

Every plate had been set by hand. A single line of type could take an afternoon, and a misplaced letter meant pulling the whole line apart and starting over.² The compositor kept a tin of spares on the windowsill for exactly that reason.

What they were looking for was registration³, the moment the colour plates fall into line and the image stops shimmering. Off by a hair and the faces go soft; on, and the page goes quiet.⁴