Kissing

Tuesday

Bryan Appleyard

What’s in a kiss? A millennium of mixed messages

From our UK edition

Kissing is a tricky subject. It has a complex, baffling history. The kiss of a baby is one thing; the kiss of lust something quite else. Kings, generals and prelates used to kiss, as did mafiosi – often before killing. The kiss has many meanings, all of which are explored in this informative, if sometimes wearing, book. Finally, a warning: if you’re queasy about arse-kissing, don’t read it. But then you would be missing a lot. Katie Barclay, a diligent Australian academic, has written an ‘overview of the world of the kiss in Europe from medieval times to the present’. Her opening words begin listing the startling variety of the kissing involved: ‘Smooch, snog, pash, smack, peck, canoodle...

Thursday

Melanie McDonagh

Luis Rubiales and the weirdness of a kiss

From our UK edition

A kiss is just a kiss, no? But when it’s Jenni Hermoso, the forward of the victorious Spanish women’s football team, on the receiving end, and the president of the Spanish football federation, Luis Rubiales, doing the kissing, and it’s during the official post-match ceremony in front of an interested global audience… it’s different.  Immediately afterwards, Miss Hermoso declared that she ‘didn’t like it’. Rubiales was defiant. ‘It was a kiss between two friends celebrating something,’ he declared, calling his critics ‘idiots and stupid people’. He may have had in mind the minister of equality in Spain’s caretaker government, Irene Montero, who described the kiss as ‘a form of sexual violence’. Yes, well, it just shows you how fraught kissing is.