In these dismal times, we must take our comforts and pleasures where we can, but really, the lengths to which some people go. It was recently reported in the Oxford Mail that “scientists at Oxford University have been trying to capture the smell of ancient books for visitors planning to attend a forthcoming Bodleian Library exhibition”. Shakespeare’s 1623 First Folio, for example, is said to have “muted sweet notes of benzaldehyde, a chemical evocative of maraschino cherries, and 2-nonenal, known as mouldy furniture smell to odour experts, but there are also strong traces of tobacco”.
Just the sort of topic to promote lively newspaper correspondence and this one didn’t disappoint, turning up in the Times, courtesy of William Holloway, who threw in the delightful term “osmobibliology”, the enjoyment of smelling books. His coinage or not I don’t know, but just the sort of thing to lighten the mood.
The world of fashion is also guaranteed to send you away in a more cheerful disposition. Who knew, for example, that the current must-have item in a woman’s wardrobe is a spracket? A what? I hear you cry. It’s shorthand for a spring jacket, obviously. I wonder whether it also applies to men. If so, my battle-worn Barbour surely places me firmly at fashion’s cutting edge.
Babylon Berlin, meanwhile, goes from strength to strength, with lashings of sex, torture, casual death and assassinations, and the subtitling, which I mentioned in my last column, has come nicely up to speed. Until the last episode I watched. One character, apoplectic with fury, let rip in full fruity fashion at another’s opinion. And how did the subtitler describe said opinion? As “balderdash”. Oh dear, I might need a refreshing waft of the First Folio to restore me.
•Jonathan Bouquet is an Observer columnist
