Alistair Cooke’s bookcase in his New York apartment, with shelving arranged geographically  12302

For most of my time as a foreign correspondent, this has been my daily map of the United States, and I mean literally a map. I once had a secretary who was hopeless at geography, and to help her – and me – find the right books, I arranged them in this order. Everything on New England is in the north-east corner, you go right down the coast to Florida, across the Deep South, the South West to California,  up to Oregon, Washington. And you have to have high boots to reach Alaska. Now because of a continuing interest in California history, California tends to go halfway across the country and spill right over into Texas, rather like the Californians’ mental map of the United States.

Array
(
    [_edit_last] => Array
        (
            [0] => 1
        )

    [_edit_lock] => Array
        (
            [0] => 1545746867:1
        )

    [inlibrary] => Array
        (
            [0] => "12298"*00:05:53
        )

)