Guinness World Records: 60 years of inspiring the extraordinary

Like many great ideas, it all seems so simple with the benefit of hindsight. The story goes that one day in the early 1950s, a certain Hugh Beaver was out with his chums shooting in the wilds of Ireland's County Wexford when they started to argue over which game bird might be Europe's fastest. It was a riddle the group could find no way to solve and a concept started to form in Beaver's mind, linked to the fact that he was at the time managing director of the Guinness brewery.

How about a book that solves such riddles, Beaver pondered, one that might go a long way towards ending the arguments you hear around the bar about what's the biggest, the fastest, the tallest.

Incredible, really, that no one had thought of it before, but here we are, with August 27 marking the 60th anniversary of the first publication of what has since 1998 been known as . That first edition was pieced together by sports journalists Norris and Ross McWhirter, and the GWR organisation has since expanded its reach into television, publishing and even "bespoke record campaigns" as bonding and promotional exercises for businesses, with the aim all along of inspiring "ordinary people to do extraordinary things".

The book (formerly known as ) has become "the bestselling copyrighted title of all time" with more than 130 million copies shifted in more than 100 countries - and people continue to use its pages to settle arguments while dreaming of setting a few records of their own.

"It's the idea of information and knowing about the world," says Blythe Fitzwiliam, commercial director of Guinness World Records Greater China, when asked to explain why the book has been so popular.