The Intimate Sense of Smell “The Intimate Sense of Smell” in Nat Geo by Boyd Gibbons (Sept. 1986) features the word “mesquite.” In reference to Baudelaire the article uses the word “censer.” ( The former is a kind of tree; the latter is synonymous with “thurible.”) “What we lack is not a profound sense of smell, but encouragement to talk about intimate odors.” Neither do we practice an adequate vocabulary when it comes to smell. Germans say “Ich kann ihn nicht riechen.” This means “I can’t smell him,” which really means “I can’t stand him.” Knights In Lawrence James’ “Warrior Race” about the British at war, knights are depicted as physically powerful, highly trained and spiritually intact servants of their king. There’s a “but;” the demands of chivalry were such that over time acquisitiveness became a greater influence. A knight was entitled to the spoils of war. He was, after all, risking life and limb for victory; why shouldn’t he profit? Kings such as Richard III and Henry VIII actively encouraged rapacious, vengeful behaviour in their knights, ensuring that a message was sent – namely that challenging his power entailed consequences. Not that Big Brother Lionel Shriver’s “Big Brother” tells the story of Pandora Halfdanarson whose brother Edison was once a successful jazz pianist and is due to stay with her for a while. She collects him at the airport only to discover he is morbidly obese. She acts like she doesn’t notice but before long tensions arise at home, not least because her fitness-obsessed husband Fletcher can’t abide her sibling; neither does the latter try especially hard to get along with his brother-in-law. Edison agrees to lose weight with Pandora’s help but this help may come at the cost of her marriage since...

Silence. At last his world was filled with silence. He felt like breaking down. He had seen people do it before and could never understand why. He understood now. His body juddered as he realised he could no longer control his movements. He was now reduced to just endless blubbering and he found that tears and mucus seeped from his eyes and nose. That feeling of loneliness was beginning to set in. He knew it could be a matter of minutes, hours or days before anyone came back. He had never been in such a situation. All he had now were his thoughts. Everything he had done in the past few years flooded back to him and created a map to point to how he had landed himself in this place. Alone in his darkened, silent room, he began to think. It had been a bright Thursday morning when Aiden woke. Aiden hated Thursdays, except no-one ever knew why. Then again, no-one had ever really bothered to ask him why. “It’s the day before Friday,” he’d mumble as an answer. This one didn’t appear to be any different. Aiden was a man who thrived on routine. As such he had one in place: get up, get washed, have breakfast, feed the dog, watch the morning news and head off to work. That’s how he had stayed under the radar; that’s how he had stayed who he was for so long. Nobody had any clue who Aiden was, nor did they really care. That’s why Aiden was so good at what he did in his life. All the world knew was that military organisations around the globe were experiencing difficulties with their electronics. Engineers on-site weren’t able to solve the problem by themselves so the...

Jeremy Clarkson, as I expect everyone knows at this stage, is an English TV presenter and works with the BBC. The BBC was founded in 1922 and one of the first TV stations in the world. TV, or television, was pioneered by John Logie Baird. Baird was originally from Scotland, as was also Alexander Graham Bell. Bell is commonly credited with inventing the telephone, but in actual fact he only made adjustments to the original design of Antonio Meucci. Meucci, though he spent his final years in New York, was originally from Florence and was a friend of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the man who unified Italy in the mid-nineteenth century. Garibaldi wasn’t the sole driver of the rise of Piedmontese dominance on the peninsula; he was ably assisted by Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, and the Romantic composer Giuseppe Verdi. There have been many connections drawn between Verdi and the French composer of the same era, Hector Berlioz, who wrote one of the quintessential compositions of the nineteenth century, Symphonie Fantastique. This symphony was unusual in that it consisted of five movements and not the regular four, and also that the instrumentation required meant only the biggest orchestras could hope to perform it. The symphony, typical of the era, told the story of a man (Berlioz) trying to get together with the woman of his dreams (the actress Harriet Smithson). Smithson was Irish by birth and grew up in Ennis, County Clare. Though not himself from the county, there remains a connection between Clare and Che Guevara. “Che,” as he is affectionately known, came from Argentina. Argentina is a country that lays claim to the British-controlled islands of the Falklands, and has even fought a war for said archipelago. There was controversy recently when a...