Lost Consonants is a text and image word play series which illustrates a sentence from which one vital letter has been removed, altering its meaning. Welcome to a world where children have leaning difficulties and youths can become addicted to rugs; where firemen wear fame-resistant clothing and footballers get camp in their legs; where dogs start baking and horses start catering, and where, after several days without water, everyone is really thirty.
Lost Consonants appeared weekly in the Weekend Guardian for 15 years (1990-2005) as well as in the Sydney Morning Herald for more than a year. The series also appeared regularly in Spotlight Verlag (Germany), EL Gazette, International English Language Journal; Mail and Guardian, South Africa and BBC English Magazine. It has been cited in numerous academic textbooks and has been used as teaching tool, particularly by those teach dyslexic students or English as a foreign language.
Eight Lost Consonants books have been published from the series.
- 1991 Lost Consonants - 4th Estate, UK, Atlantic Press USA ISBN 0871135280
- 1992 More Lost Consonants - 4th Estate, London, ISBN 1857020626
- 1993 Lost Consonants 3 - 4th Estate, London, ISBN 185702141x
- 1994 Lost Consonants 4 - 4th Estate, London, ISBN 1857023749
- 1995 Lost Consonants 5 - 4th Estate, London, ISBN 1857023749
- 1996 Lost Consonants 6 - 4th Estate, London, ISBN 1857025636
- 1997 Lost Consonants 7 - 4th Estate, London, ISBN 1857027752
- 1999 Return of Lost Consonants - Boxtree, London ISBN 0752217941
'GrahamRawle's deeply surreal one-frame gags are for many of us the best thing in the Guardian all week. One of the greatest simple-but-brilliant running ideas of all time.' The Scotsman
