Vermeer’s Hat – Best Book I’ve Read this Year so Far

I’m not going to review Timothy Brook’s excellent Vermeer’s Hat here as I’ve been paid to review it elsewhere and don’t want to annoy anyone who pays me. But thought it worth a mention as a great book. Brook takes five Vermeer paintings from Delft in the 1600s and by studying them links up the incredibly connected seventeenth century world with an emphasis on the role of China – beaver felt hats, porcelain, maps – all link in some way to Canada, Virginia and China. Brook brilliantly discusses the development of silver as currency, smoking as a global habit and the European obsession with the supposed riches to be had in China. A real eye opener of a book for those of us who tend to get a little ghettoized in nineteenth and twentieth century history. I doubt I’ll read anything more engrossing or informative and thought provoking this year.