Four Points of the Compass

Jerry Brotton

Allen Lane

£20.00

This thought-provoking book opens with the famous ‘Blue Marble’ photograph of the earth, taken by the Apollo 17 astronauts, then inverted by NASA to ensure it was shown ‘North-up’. Brotton’s initial chapter on orientation encourages a more flexible attitude towards compass points, differentiating between approaches based on the sun’s East-West movement and North-South systems using magnetic polarity. He then focusses on language and explores the way different civilisations have interpreted East, South, North and West culturally and politically, often to stigmatise people from different quadrants.

He asks now whether increasing dependence on GPS and smart-phone technologies risks diminishing our intellectual ability by ignoring vital position-related neurons in our brains.

It’s a pity that he doesn’t come way-finding at sea.