Second paragraph of third chapter:

If you have Spotify, snap the handy QR code below for a carefully curated playlist.

I confess that I wasn’t previously aware of the Map Men, who have a popular YouTube channel about the making of maps. This is one of their latest videos, including lots of (reasonably well pronounced) Dutch, about the making of the Netherlands:

Their book boils down sixteen cases of maps that were, are, or became incorrect, and has a jolly look at the history of each case. To be honest I prefer my history and cartography without extra tinsel, and in particular the fifty pages devoted to the story of the Donner Party dramatised as a debate between a fictional American and his high-school teacher seemed rather self-indulgent. (Not to mention the fictionalised debate between different parts of President Truman’s brain in the last chapter.)

However there’s some brilliant stuff here too. Chapter 5, on the UK’s ‘regions’ for Independent Television broadcasters, truly informs and entertains; I knew that the map was wonky, but I had no ide just how wonky, with King’s Lynn and Leeds getting the same ‘local’ news. Actually, let’s have a musical interlude in honour of the one UK region whose borders were pretty fixed, Ulster Television:

Chapter 14, on the development of the satnav and why we should not forget about more traditional ways of navigation, has lots of lovely details that I was unaware of. And despite the Truman’s brain joke, the final chapter, on the Marshall Islands, is tragic (I have some experience of that country).

Anyway, there’s much more here to love than to dislike. You can get This Way Up here.

This was the first book that I finished reading this year.