The Book of Phobias and ManiasDo you recoil in arachnophobic horror at the sight of a spider or twitch with nomophobia when you misplace your mobile phone? Do your book buying habits verge on bibliomania? Perhaps you find yourself mired in indecision and uncertainty? (Would it be reassuring to give this a name: aboulomania?) Our phobias and manias are contradictory and multiple: deeply intimate, yet forged by the times we live in the commonest form of anxiety disorder, but rarely

you know that tonnes of plastic will be making their way into landfill as a result of unwanted gifts or broken baubles

but Tella isn't yet free

Gordon Giles spends each week in a different room gleaning spiritual lessons from everyday household objects

published with the permission of Her Majesty the Queen

Keen to spread his own interests abroad

trial and imprisonment in Siberian jail for standing up for what she believed in

a figure of fun and menace in the musical Hamilton

Each of these companions is stranger and more dangerous than the last

For half the sixteenth century

cats and chaos

Cream and Blind Faith

and civil society collapsed into chaos