Back to the past may beat back to the future as the place to go when we get that time-slipping ship. Carole Angier鈥檚 moving biography The Double Bond: Primo Levi, a biography (Penguin, 拢9.99) is revealing: the hopeless search for nickel in mine tailings finds echo in Levi鈥檚 life, his writing and his obsessions.
Go further back, and in Levi鈥檚 country the best of the Romans is all around you. In Britain 鈥� 鈥渋t鈥檚 just a province,鈥� said an Italian archaeologist pityingly 鈥� there has been world-class work on the Roman world. The invasion and creation of Roman Britain is memorialised in the British Museum, and T. W. Potter鈥檚 revised edition of Roman Britain (British Museum Press, 拢8.99) is just out in paperback.