Press Release · October 2026

An Inventor’s Tale — a love letter to living with imagination

British inventor and artist Tom Lawton publishes an extraordinary memoir that began on J.K. Rowling’s writing desk, was written in prison and finished in colourful Camden Town.

London, United Kingdom EMBARGOED UNTIL 00:01 GMT, MONDAY 26 OCTOBER 2026

Sometimes it’s difficult to contain my excitement for life — handwritten sign on a London street — Sometimes It’s Difficult — Tom Lawton, London, 2026.

London, October 2026 — An Inventor’s Tale is the story of a life spent following imagination wherever it leads.

Along the way have come extraordinary inventions, unlikely adventures, moments of wonder, spectacular failures, love, fatherhood and heartbreak. Then came prison.

What might have been the end of one story became the beginning of another.

His first book, An Inventor’s Tale, is a memoir and a creative odyssey of sorts.

At HMP Winchester, Lawton spent nine months on remand, writing his memoir by hand with a Biro.

Between those three places lies a story about the extraordinary possibilities of an ordinary human life.

For months, the handwritten manuscript lay hidden beneath his prison bed.

Lawton is the inventor behind Firewinder, BubbleScope, Million Mile Light, Uplift and WakeYoo. His work has taken him from the workshop to television screens, from commercial invention to public art, and increasingly into the territory where science, nature and philosophy meet.

His kinetic sculpture Wonder, developed over seven years, is perhaps the clearest expression of his philosophy. A continuously moving, bi-helical form that appears to change while remaining the same, Wonder invites people to stop, look and experience something beyond the everyday.

See Wonder in motion: www.inwonderwetrust.com/wonder

But An Inventor’s Tale is not a catalogue of inventions.

It is a deeply personal, frequently funny and sometimes painful account of what it means to follow your curiosity through life, even when the path takes you somewhere you never imagined going.

“The path appears as you walk it.”

Lawton spent nine months on remand after being charged with attempting to steal a postman’s scanner. That’s right. Nine months behind bars for attempting — and failing — to steal a postman’s scanner. When asked what he planned to do with it, Lawton joked that he was going to steal every single parcel in Britain.

Prison officers at HMP Winchester remarked, “Well, you’re not a very good robber.”

“No, I am not,” Lawton replied.

“You’d best invent something else then.”

And so he did. A new life.

Stripped of almost everything familiar, Lawton began to discover what he really needed. He found kindness in strangers, trust in unlikely places and, perhaps most surprisingly, a renewed love for life.

Prison became an unlikely incubation chamber. Not because confinement was a gift, but because somewhere within it he discovered something that could not be taken away: freedom of spirit.

From that experience emerged two deeply connected works.

The first is An Inventor’s Tale, a memoir handwritten in prison, tracing an extraordinary journey through invention, imagination, love, loss and the discovery of inner freedom.

The second is The Golden Thread, an artwork conceived during his imprisonment, now being brought into the world as a collection of fine art prints and embroidered works.

Both are expressions of the same discovery: that even when almost everything is taken away, there remains something within us that cannot be imprisoned.

What happens when everything is taken away from you? Who are we when nobody else is watching? And what would you do with newfound freedom?

For Lawton, the answer is still unfolding. Since leaving prison, he has received an invitation to bring Wonder to Bethlehem, where he hopes to inspire children at a newly built natural history museum, created a phenomenal collection of artworks, received two Koestler Awards for work made in prison, and seen a patent granted for an invention exploring a gentler way of working with nature, part of a biomimetic body of work he calls Bioturbonics.

He hopes to offer his giant bronze Wonder sculpture to the British Museum, so that people from all walks of life might experience it. For Lawton, imagination and freedom of expression belong to everyone.

“Expression conquers depression.”

Now, back in the world of endless distraction, Lawton faces a different challenge: to protect that freedom, to recognise what deserves his attention and what does not, and to keep walking towards something greater than himself. Above all, he hopes to help others discover something of that freedom for themselves.

For perhaps the greatest discovery was that freedom had never been something he needed to acquire. It was something he needed to uncover.

Liberation is an inside job.

Yet more important than any sculpture, invention or quest is the quiet work of building a life where his two boys always know they can find him.

Responsibility is your ABILITY → TO → RESPOND.

For everyone still finding their freedom.