Potatoes and their pathologies

Rot: A History of the Irish Famine Padraic X. Scanlan, London: Robinson, 2025, 340pps., hb., £25 Sometimes great matters can turn on – vegetables. Ancient civilization was founded on the ‘simple’ discovery that grasses could become grains, reliable and storable – allowing the emergence of fixed ‘Fertile Crescent’ cities with rulers and philosophers. But vegetables… Continue reading