Geography

Thursday

Emily Rhodes

Staycation reading

When it comes to choosing good books to read on holiday, I am a great believer in selecting reading matter to match the destination. What better to read in Sicily than Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa’s The Leopard, for instance? And how wonderful to read Laurie Lee’s beautiful As I Walked Out one Midsummer Morning while in Spain. This school of thought can be taken to extremes — I even have a friend who chooses her holidays based entirely on what she wants to read. The only downside to this approach is that when summer stretches ahead of you with no sunny holiday on the horizon, then you feel not only like you’re missing out on a lovely trip, but also on the chance for some exotic reading.

Wednesday

Andro Linklater

The Natures of Maps

Is this map of birds’ migratory routes informative or deceptive? Does it create the impression that nature is flourishing when it is really in decay? In today’s golden age of cartography, when technology has lifted mapmaking to an unprecedented level of sophistication, The Natures of Maps wants to be a party-pooper. Maps, it declares, pretend to be objective when their information is really political and selective. It seems a rather obvious message. The prejudices of mapmakers have been apparent at least since the 14th century when the monkish creators of the Mappa Mundi placed Jerusalem at the centre of the world. This book is, however, aimed at geography students, and assumes a degree of gullibility not to be found among Spectator readers.