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Booksrss

The attraction of repulsion

31 March 2012
That’s Disgusting Rachel Herz

W.W. Norton, pp.274, 16.99

Take some boiled maize, chew it, spit it out, put the mixture into an urn, bury it, dig it up several days later, and Bob’s your uncle: the Ecuadoran delicacy… Read more

Quirky Books: Treasure-troves of trivia

3 December 2011

Connoisseurs of the Christmas gift book market — we are a select group, with little otherwise to occupy our time — will have noticed a couple of significant absences from… Read more

Unpredictable pleasures

20 November 2010
The Big Bang: Christmas Crackers 2000-2009 John Julius Norwich

The Dovecote Press, pp.365, 20

As befits a magazine with an erudite and international readership, I shall begin this review with a short salutation in the Western Greenland Eskimo language: ‘Ata, sûlorsimavutit!’ The phrase, as… Read more

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Charmed out of their minds

20 November 2010
Passport to Peking: A Very British Mission to Mao's China Patrick Wright

OUP, pp.591, 20

David Cameron probably didn’t need reminding while he was in China what fools intelligent people can be when they visit authoritarian regimes. David Cameron probably didn’t need reminding while he… Read more