This afternoon as I investigated the various mysterious folders on my old computer labelled “Miscellaneous” and “to sort” I found a foreword I wrote for the website www.unseenhistories.com to accompany their beautifully designed web version of part of the silk chapter in my 2021 book Fabric. It made me smile to remember thinking of the silk moth I saw in Lyon as my own white rabbit.

Lucas Cranach’s matching portraits of Henry IV of Saxony and Catherine of Mecklenburg, showing the new fashions both for full length portraits and for clothes cut to show the expensive silk peeking out from underneath.

“When I was writing Fabric, I found myself pushing back the planning of the silk chapter until almost the end. With bark cloth and sackcloth and linen and cotton and the others, there were clear and burning questions in my mind that I was excited to find the answers to. With silk, I was initially less interested in it because it was so obviously luxurious. And having lived in Asia for more than a decade, I had a vague (and as it turned out totally unfounded) feeling that I probably already knew much of what I needed to know. 

But then I went to Lyon, historical centre of France’s silk industry, and I met a silk moth for the first time. It looked like a fluffy white rabbit and like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, it was the moth itself that would be my guide into the rabbit hole of research into, and discovery of, the extraordinary fabric that is silk. In the end it was a journey full of unexpected turns and discoveries. And it was a journey that began where it needed to begin, with a sharp sense of compassion for all the creatures that die to give us silk. 

Fabric is the third in what’s turned out to be a trilogy of books about the histories of small, bright and (usually) lovely materials. And when I was researching each of the books I found doors opening into worlds of history and struggle and beauty and symbolism, and every time it was a surprise.”

The truth is, if John Le Carre hadn’t decided to drop his original rather plodding first sentence of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, (“No one paid much attention when Jim arrived at Thursgood’s: a sandy man with a criss-crossed handsome face”) the beginning of that book might not have been half as well loved as it is. The way that with its absolute directness and energy the original second sentence, now the first (“The truth is, if old [Major] Dover hadn’t dropped dead at Taunton races, Jim would never have come to Thursgood’s at all”) drops us straight into the action; the way we as readers go in a few seconds from not knowing anything about that whole waning spy world of the 1960s that was Le Carrés chosen milieu, to being part of it. There’s a genius there, but it’s rather comforting to see that he didn’t get it right first time.

The corrected typed manuscript of that first Le Carré book is just one of the many treasures of the wonderful Write, Cut, Rewrite exhibition at the Bodleian library in Oxford.

I wanted to wonder more at Bruce Chatwin’s famous Moleskin notebook (a bit bigger than I’d imagined and with messier handwriting. Or lose myself in George Eliot’s immaculate copperplate in a miniature notebook beside it, making observations from her journey in Italy. Or ponder on the comma removed by Joyce from the first page of A Portrait of the Artist for the second edition in 1917. Or Jenny Joseph’s correction of her much-loved poem “Warning”, with a rather too respectable verse about respectability that was replaced by something much more lively.

And as for Shelley’s Ozymandias. It was written in 1818 as a contest with his fellow poet Horace Smith to write a poem on a random subject (and the one they chose was a passage from Diodorus of Sicily). Once he’d done his corrections to the first draft there was almost nothing left. Except for that famous line: “My name is Ozymandias – King of Kings.”

And a little inspiration that almost all writing, almost all creativity, takes several goes, sometimes many many goes, to make it wonderful.

It’s at the Bodleian until January 2025. And it’s free.

I have just read a lovely message from a reader, who was revisiting Oliver Sacks’ 2005 book Oaxaca Journal, and came across his story of how Sacks always greeted his old friend, chemist and botanist David Emory. They’d had a long and satisfying conversation about arsenic sulphides, with Sacks liking the “euphonious” sulphides orpiment and realgar, which were used for vivid (and poisonous) orange and yellow paints, and Emory loving iron arsenic sulphide, mostly because it’s sometimes called mispickel (which seems to be from the German, with the pickle bit meaning either pick as in a tool or pimple) which he said his students “always took for the name of a sour maiden lady, Miss Pickle”.

From that conversation onwards, he and Emory adopted a regular three-part sulphides greeting.

“He says ‘Orpiment,’ to which I retort, ‘Realgar’ and he caps the trio with ‘Mispickel!’

Saying goodbye went the other way.

So Mispickel.

Orpiment.

Realgar!

My UK publishers Sceptre turned 30 this year, with a splendid celebration on the new Hodder & Stoughton rooftop overlooking the Thames at Blackfriars. To celebrate they asked some of their authors to write a short piece about time, and the creative process. This was mine….

When I turned 49 I thought big birthdays didn’t matter; by 49-and-a-half, I knew they did. I marked my 50th by walking the 500-mile camino pilgrimage across northern Spain.

The idea was to reach Santiago by my birthday, but after my right knee swelled like a plump grapefruit on day two I had to let go of that plan.

I had to let go of just about every plan.

I was carrying too much: two novels for God’s sake, coloured pencils, three extra kilos of nothing. Then one day I found myself on a track through one of the most ancient human sites in Europe. Even though millions of pilgrims had walked before me, I knew I would find something. Continue reading →

This article was originally published in The Smithsonian Journeys Quarterly in spring 2016. It looked amazing in its original print edition – incredible photos. It’s nice to find it online just now.

you land in India anytime in late February or March, it’s wise to check the dates of the annual Holi festival, and bring a spare set of clothes. That’s because for a few days in spring, people crowd the streets and splash brilliantly colored dyes on anyone walking by. It’s hard to avoid the fun—and paint—unless you stay inside or look menacing enough to discourage the custom.

“Watch out, madam!” said my taxi driver in Amritsar as we drove through a melee of young people pelting each other with powder.

“The colors never come out of your clothes,” he said. “And you might be having purple hair for many days. It is a complete liability.”

I did a quick check. I was wearing black, a color rarely seen in India. In the caste, or “varna,” system (which in Sanskrit translates as the “color” system), it is usually associated with the lowest categories of social classes, and can be viewed as unlucky. A Forbes study in 2009, which compared corporate logo colors in India with international brands, suggested that black is the one color that companies in India assiduously avoid. I was happy for my clothes to be permanently splattered.

“Can we stop?” I asked. “Or will I make your taxi dirty when I get back in?”

“No, madam, I have a cloth for just this exact purpose,” he said. “And I have some powder I bought for my children. You can have some gladly, to join in our customs.”

Holi represents the arrival of spring and the triumph of good over evil. It is also said to be the enactment of a game the Hindu god Lord Krishna played with his consort Radha and the gopis, or milkmaids. The story represents the fun and flirtatiousness of the gods but also touches on deeper themes: of the passing of the seasons and the illusory nature of the material world.

Traditionally the colors used in Holi came from flowers and herbs—which in the hot climate of India tend to produce bright natural dyes—but today they’re usually synthetic. The tub of crimson powder the driver handed me was almost fluorescent; holding this as my weapon of choice, I walked into the Holi smoke. Continue reading →