CATHERINE STEEL relishes a compelling novel about Augustus’s right hand man, but misses the politics, the cultural shifts, and more detail about his restoration of Rome
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Vanilla: A global history
Evocative account of a plant valued in nearly every culture for ts aroma and taste
HUGELY PROLIFIC: Vanilla
TONY BURKE speaks to JOEL McIVER, co-author of the biography of bluesman John Mayall
A misfit couple unhappily ever after, a dead man walking, dodgy journos, and trench art trucking
New releases from Javon Jackson, IZE Trio, and Mal Waldron Trio
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an intriguing multi-layered depiction, dominated by a stunning impersonation of Marilyn herself
EWAN CAMERON marvels at the impossible ambition, realised with dreamlike finesse of translating Italo Calvino to the stage
ROSA ABREU-RUNKEL’S Vanilla is anything but — if that word is taken to mean bland or predictable.
Her book tells the story of 500 hundred years of mercantile and capitalist innovation and exploitation through the
cultivation and consumption of the cured, dried and conditioned beans of the vanilla planifolia plant, part of the orchid family.
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