On the Governing of Empires

<p>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.</p>