Finding Kristallnacht in an optician's chart, flushing heresy from a Michelin guide, procuring princesses courtesy of furnishings catalogues and constructing a guided tour of Bedlam from the names of British moths, Alasdair Paterson brings a Byzantine range of techniques-cut-and-mosaic, palimpsest dialectic, diplomatic transplant and induced mutation-to a series of innocent texts, most without a prior thought of poetry in their heads, to build an indispensible vademecum for the imperially and post-imperially inclined.