What we learned this week

Today is Bookshop Day in the UK, which seems like a good time to remind you all that I have a dedicated bookshop for this website: Earthbound Books. You can get anything you want there, not just the booklists curated by me that feature on the homepage. The revenues from Earthbound Books pay the hosting fees for this website, so thanks to those of you who choose it over that retail giant named after a rainforest.

Having grown up in a country where malaria was a constant sinister presence for m...