The title itself suggests a place at odds with itself. Madrid should be a place of sunlight and siestas and a certain effortless luxury.

It seems appropriate then that this unseen side of Spain should form the backdrop for one of the unseen dramas of WWII. At the mention of that defining conflict, the Anglo-Saxon imagination leaps to the Battle of Britain, ‘our finest hour’. That saga, however, is almost completely absent from Sansom’s narrative.

Yet the novel does not concern itself with evoking the Spanish consciousness, and instead uses it as a blank slate upon which it projects British concerns and sees how they play out. The main strands of pre-war British thought are present in the form of Bernie Piper, staunch class warrior and Communist, Harry Brett, awkward champion of the ruling classes, Sandy Forsy, the ruthless capitalist, and Babara, compassionate paragon of femininity.

Apart from the smattering of Spanish words and place names there is nothing that really transports the reader, apart from the opening chapter, a superb and compelling piece of writing. The piece as a whole is largely successful in crossing time and place, taking in Rookwood (a fictional public school), London, Cambridge, the heady days of Socialist Madrid and the grinding tyranny following the Fascist takeover. Each setting has its ideological point to prove; at first Sansom seems to idealize Rookwood, only to reveal that its money came from the slave trade.

While Sansom does claim that if he could be any historical figure it would be Clement Atlee, he is also keen to stress the limits of Socialism. The Spanish Civil war is presented as a human tragedy rather than the triumph of evil. Sansom has created not only a historical meditation but also a compelling spy thriller with a cast of interesting, although not fully fleshed out, characters.

However, if you are looking for a flavour of Spain you will be surprised to find an unexpected, if not exotic, taste in your mouth.

Three stars

This is a frustrating book, but it couldn’t be any other way. Most other popular science writing is about questions answered, perhaps with a few unknowns left over.

This book, about how we perceive music, is about mysteries with no real explanation. Sacks’ writing style doesn’t help matters; he opts for the atheist-mystical prose style all too popular in this genre: meditative, introspective, it rapidly becomes the literary equivalent of listening to Coldplay on repeat, made worse by his tic of describing all his male patients as ‘eminent’ and all his female ones as ‘gifted’.

Musicophilia begins by asking why humans are the way we are. What is the point of humans being evolved to be interested in music? Why is it so important to us? Why do tunes get stuck in people’s heads, when photographs and paintings just don’t? Why is our processing of speech and sound so separate, so people who cannot speak due to a stroke can sing perfectly, or can understand speech but hear music as a cacophony?

Theories exist, and Sacks mentions them, but the main focus of the book is a series of case studies, which show how abnormalities can throw a little light on how our minds perceive music. All different, many terrifying (imagine being unable to stop hearing music in your mind), their bare facts alone give tantalising hints of how brains work.

Brain damage can suddenly give people a talent for music they did not have before; mescaline can make emotional music overpowering but destroy perception of classical music’s structure; amnesia victims unable to remember anything for more than a few seconds can conduct a choir perfectly.

Ultimately, the fascination, scope, and sheer strangeness of the book’s subjects transcend its flaws: Musicophilia gives a real sense of where science might go next, and how little we understand of what goes on inside our heads. Big mysteries, frustrating though they might be, are fascinating in a way a small answer can’t hope to match.

Four stars

Today I chanced upon the worst piece of journalism I’ve ever come across. Insert your own OxStu joke here if you must, but I am in fact talking about Peaches Geldof’s new column in Nylon magazine.

Wince at the reference to the inhabitants of Indiana as ‘locals’ that somehow evokes Michael Palin inviting himself into a Yurt on the Russian steppes. Laugh at the way she seems to think buying second-hand clothes is cool and original. Gawp at the complete lack of either self-awareness or irony. Pay closest attention, however, to the way she characterises a few weeks in a van in America as a ‘Jack Kerouac adventure.’

This is the lasting legacy of Kerouac and On the Road. He and his most famous book are also to blame for the tiresome phenomenon of bald white guys who think themselves cool because they own a few jazz records, but his most heinous crime is that of romanticising slackerdom.

Thanks to Kerouac, middle-class kids think it’s fine to waste time and money (the issue of whose time and money it is matters little) being noncontributing members of society, spending all their time drunk, high, or having sex.

Kerouac, then, invented the gap year; the idea that if you spend enough time wandering aimlessly you’re sure to ‘find yourself’ eventually. By the end of the book, Sal Paradise is drained, weary, symbolically dead, let down by his hollow dream and empty idols, but Kerouac has spent too much time glorifying Paradise and Moriarty’s transcontinental hedonism for the final pages’ sobering moral message to really ring true.

There’s another reason Peaches Geldof considers On the Road such a cultural touchstone. It’s there in her column, when she coos with glee at buying family heirlooms from the poor at knockdown prices, and it’s there in Kerouac’s awkward, voyeuristic depictions of blacks and Mexicans in On the Road. The book represents the middle-class desire to shrug off the oh-so-wearying shackles of privilege and wealth in order to go see how the other half lives.

It is, in large parts, Pulp’s Common People with all the irony sucked out, or Orwell’s Down and out in Paris and London minus the genuine pain and suffering. With a writing style as lazy as its characters, this is soft fiction for soft people.

Redeem Yourself: Read this instead
Allen Ginsberg’s Howl – A far more powerful statement of the Beat movement’s ideals.

I have been lucky (I use the term loosely) enough to arrive on my year abroad in time for the ten-day Cairo Festival of Experimental Theatre. Far from Oxford’s bubble-wrapped student productions, Cairo takes the Middle East’s theatrical answer to the Eurovision Song Contest to a whole new level.

Hailing from as faraway as Latvia or Brazil, the productions constituted a surreal cocktail from interpretative Sudanese line dancing to Shakespeare in Nigeria. Moreover, the governing body, taking things a little too literally perhaps, exhibited an ‘experimental’ level of organisational incompetence that would make even the OUDS committee blush.

There was always the possibility that the venue may have been changed without warning, the show may not start on time (if at all), or the theatre may not even exist.

Yet, armed with nothing but that proverbial pinch of salt and an invulnerable sense of humour I set off, like a wanderer in the night, in search of theatrical treasure.

When I struck gold it was often for the wrong reasons. I soon came to learn that comedy was, if unintentionally, high on the agenda. I saw an utterly bizarre show called Frog’s Wing, where a combination of Casio keyboard kitsch, a temperamental technical producer and three graceless Sudanese men dressed as birds, resulted in a hilarious show performed at times in absolute darkness to a pre-recorded string section accompaniment.

My experience with Shakespeare has been equally painful. Had it not been for three very carefully placed English sentences I would have had absolutely no idea that I was even watching Julius Caesar. The rest of the pale skinned and fair-haired members of the audience were, having foolishly trusted the word of the festival schedule, expecting a Russian play about the beginning of the world.

It doesn’t get better I’m afraid. Turning up to see Romeo and Juliet at a small theatre inside the National Opera House compound, I walked in on the final death scene hopelessly clutching a ticket that said it wasn’t to start for another ten minutes. The bows were good though.

However, despite the absurdity, I have many happy memories. An exhausting hour searching for The Tale of the Deadly Butterfly (at a nonexistent theatre) resulted in a wonderful evening: I was taught to play Backgammon (well, I might add) in a local Egyptian coffeehouse.

If theatre in Cairo has taught me anything it is to appreciate the unexpected. For that I am extremely grateful.