Always in the wrong place

Notebook

June 2009

Always in the wrong place

On the relics of oppression.

from Kombinat: Industrial Ruins of the Golden Era, courtesy igloo heritage

When I went to Romania shortly before the downfall of the Ceauşescu regime, the Romanians (to judge by the displays in the bookshops) seemed to be a nation of stereochemists: for displayed to the exclusion of almost everything else in the bookshop windows was a volume entitled The Stereospecific Characterization of Isoprene. Perhaps the authorship, or the alleged authorship, of this volume explained its strange popularity: that of Elena Ceauşescu, Doctor of Science and Member of the Romanian Academy.

I di ...

Anthony Daniels's most recent book is In Praise of Prejudice (Encounter Books). Hewas born in 1949. After qualifying as a doctor, he worked in what was then Rhodesia, followed by South Africa, before returning for three years training as a psychiatrist in London’s East End. Three and a half years in the Gilbert Islands were interspersed with some South American wandering, and then between 1984 and 1986 he worked in Tanzania. His first book, Coups and Cocaine, was followed by Fool or Physician, subtitled ‘the memoirs of a sceptical doctor.’ Zanzibar to Timbuktu, his trek across Africa by public transport was published to great acclaim in 1988, and was a runner-up in the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award.