Writing in Journeys to the Past (1981), David Attenborough describes travelling across the Indian Ocean from Kenya to Madagascar. “In the short time that it had taken us to make the crossing, we had travelled back through fifty million years of evolutionary time. We were entering one of Nature’s lumber rooms, a place where antique outmoded forms of life that have long since disappeared from the rest of the world survive in isolation.” Comparing Madagascar to an attic in which forgotten treasures lie concealed, he went on, “Lift the creaking lid of a forgotten trunk and you may pull out a bustle or a dress of such eccentric design that you marvel at the wild changes of taste and fashion. The same fascination, the same sense of entering the past, possesses anyone who begins to study Madagascar’s animals. They, too, are survivors from a bygone age.”

After the southernmost supercontinent Gondwana broke up some 200 million years ago, the landmass that became Madagascar split from India around 88 million years ago, allowing plants and animals on the island to evolve in complete isolation. Consequently, Madagascar is a biodiversity hotspot in which over 90% of its wildlife is found nowhere else on Earth.

Initial human settlement of Madagascar occurred between 350 BCE and 550 CE by Austronesian peoples arriving on outrigger canoes from Borneo, who were later joined around 1000 CE by Bantu migrants crossing the Mozambique Channel. Other groups continued to settle on Madagascar over time, each one making lasting contributions to Malagasy cultural life.

David Quammen in The Song of the Dodo (1996) describes Madagascar as the fourth largest island on the planet behind only Greenland, New Guinea and Borneo. Madagascar is a continental island measuring 230,000 square miles and “psychologically distant from the rest of the world and burdened with a culture that venerates cows.” In times long past it was connected to its neighbouring continent and, at the moment of its isolation, it already contained “a full community of terrestrial species” – hence the Noah’s Ark analogy.

Scientists are still discovering more species. Recently, one of the world’s tiniest lizards was spotted by keen-eyed experts on a remote limestone islet: the miniature chameleon, Brookesia micra, reaches a maximum length of just 29mm. Scientists believe it may represent an extreme case of island dwarfism – a phenomenon that occurs when a species becomes smaller over evolutionary time in order to adapt to a restricted habitat such as an island.

The discovery reminds one of Lilliput and Blefuscu, two fictional island nations that appear in the first part of the novel Gulliver’s Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift. The islands are neighbours in the South Indian Ocean and are inhabited by tiny people who are about one-twelfth the height of ordinary human beings. Maybe the chameleon came from there, an ancient mariner clinging to a coco de mer blown in by a passing cyclone.

A recent edition of EarthTalk, a syndicated weekly column distributed to 1,850 newspapers, magazines and websites throughout North America, identifies a new twist to the problems posed by industrial and automotive carbon emissions: The chemistry of the world’s oceans is changing.

Studies have shown that the waters surrounding our planet are becoming more acidic as a result of the increasing amounts of human-generated carbon dioxide (CO²) absorbed from the atmosphere. About 25% of all the CO² sent skyward from exhaust pipes and smokestacks ends up in the world’s oceans. Researchers estimate that the acidity has increased by 29% since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. If the rate of greenhouse gas emissions is not slowed, our oceans could be two to three times as acidic in 2100 as they are today, which could prove disastrous to marine ecosystems and part of the world’s food chain.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says that seawater plus CO² induces a chemical reaction that adversely affects the concentration of biologically important calcium carbonate minerals. They are the essential building material for the skeletons and shells of many marine organisms, from oysters to coral. Acidification is weakening this mineral content, which is likely to affect the ability of some organisms to produce and maintain their shells. The process will not only wreak havoc on shellfish, but also on organisms that are key components at the bottom end of the marine food chain.

It is likely that coral reefs around the world will face an even greater risk because they require very high levels of carbonate to build their structures. Acidity slows reef-building, which could lower the resiliency of corals and lead to their erosion and eventual extinction. It is estimated that some one million marine species depend on healthy coral reefs for survival. The loss of coral reefs would reduce the protection that they offer coastal communities in regions such as the Pacific, Indian Ocean and the Caribbean where people are already affected by global warming.

Any large-scale effort to address ocean acidification will require the political will to do so and a rapid slowing down or phasing out of using fossil fuels. Cutting back on consumption of oil, gas and coal and switching to renewable energy sources – solar, wind, biomass and others – will be a vital part of the strategy to counteract ocean acidification. The 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Durban, South Africa, established a new treaty to limit carbon emissions, agreeing to a legally binding deal comprising all countries, which will be prepared by 2015 and take effect in 2020. Many feel that such progress is too slow.

Jacques Cousteau (1910-97), one of the world’s best known oceanographers, was convinced that people’s ultimate survival depends on the oceans of the world. He owed that insight to a near fatal car crash. In 1930, he had passed the highly competitive entrance examinations to enter France’s Naval Academy and entered naval aviation school. But the crash denied him his “wings” and he was transferred to sea duty encouraging him to swim regularly to regain strength in his badly weakened arms. The therapy had unexpected consequences.

In his book The Silent World (1953), he wrote, “Sometimes we are lucky enough to know that our lives have been changed, to discard the old, embrace the new, and run headlong down an immutable course… It happened to me … on that summer’s day, when my eyes were opened to the sea.” Cousteau spent the rest of his life trying to raise people’s awareness of our fragile ecosystem and to persuade people that, in order to survive, they must protect it.

English biography had something of a heyday in the late 18th century when the terms “biography” and “autobiography” entered the lexicon. The classic works of the period were Samuel Johnson’s Critical Lives of the Poets (1779-81) and James Boswell’s Life of Johnson (1791). Interestingly, Boswell seems not to have known Johnson half as well as he pretended, but he gets away with it by painting vivid pictures of his encounters with the author, skilfully relating anecdotal material to facts.

Samuel Johnson did not follow a chronological narration of his subjects’ lives either, but made selective use of anecdotes and incidents in the belief that biographers should seek their subject in “domestic privacies”, discovering if possible little known stories that revealed character. He would have appreciated Mark Twain’s observation that, “There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.”

There is an insightful discussion of the art of biography in The Wilson Quarterly (Autumn 2011) in the shape of an interview with biographer Michael Scammell – author of Solzhenitsyn, A Biography (1984) and Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth Century Skeptic (2009). Scammell describes the biographer as “the novelist on oath”, presenting facts in a way that delights and entertains. “One has to be able to set a scene in such a way that the reader is drawn in and convinced by what one has written, and that too is a novelistic gift.”

Being a novelist really does seem to help. Austrian writer Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) was fascinated by the French author Honoré de Balzac, about whom he wrote several essays. He planned a full-scale biography, intending that it should run to two volumes. The small study of his house in Bath, England, into which he had moved shortly before the outbreak of the 1939-45 War, became a Balzac museum, a repository of books and materials replete with underlinings, marginal comments, cross-references and slips of paper.

The biography, simply and succinctly called Balzac, was eventually written in Petropolis, Brazil, the refuge to which Zweig had fled with his wife in the summer of 1940. There he also finished his autobiography The World of Yesterday and his short story The Royal Game before deciding to commit suicide. Balzac (published in English in 1946 in a wonderful translation by Zweig’s friends William and Dorothy Rose) is among the very best of its genre. Zweig is supremely empathetic, surely a trait of the best biographers, avoiding speculation yet still finding insights that ring true.

Zweig excels in descriptive passages such as those detailing Balzac’s daily routine. Here is a snippet from a long chapter on black coffee, to which Balzac was addicted:

“Coffee was his hashish, and since like every drug it had to be taken in continually stronger doses if it was to maintain its effect, he had to swallow more and more of the murderous elixir to keep pace with the increasing strain on his nerves… If his fifty thousand cups of strong coffee (which is the number he is estimated to have drunk by a certain statistician) accelerated the writing of the vast cycle of the Comédie humaine, they were also responsible for the premature failure of a heart that was originally as sound as a bell.”

The book is out of print but can still be found at Abebooks.

Named by the English botanist and founder of the Linnean Society Sir James Edward Smith working from a drawing supplied by the American entomologist James Abbot, the Isabella Tiger Moth appeared in The Natural History of the Rarer Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia (1797), the earliest book on American insects.

The moth Pyrrharctia isabella is known by different common names at its two main life stages. The adult is the Isabella Tiger Moth and the larva is called the Banded Woolly Bear. The larvae of many species of Arctiid moths are called “woolly bears” because of their long, thick, fur-like bristles. This particular species is black at both ends with a band of coppery red in the middle. The adult moth is dull yellow to orange with a robust, furry thorax and small head. Its wings have sparse black spotting and the proximal segments on its first pair of legs are bright reddish-orange.

The curious thing about this insect – detailed in one particular episode of Frozen Planet – is that it survives in many cold regions, including the Arctic, which is where Attenborough filmed it. The Banded Woolly Bear larva emerges from the egg in the fall and overwinters in its caterpillar form, when it literally freezes solid. First its heart stops beating, then its gut freezes, then its blood, followed by the rest of the body. It survives being frozen by producing a cryoprotectant (a substance used to protect biological tissue from damage due to ice formation).

In the spring the caterpillar thaws out and eats before hibernating (and freezing) all over again. Caterpillars normally become moths within months of hatching in most temperate climates, but in the Arctic the summer period for vegetative growth and feeding is so short that the Woolly Bear feeds for several summers before it finally pupates. Once it emerges from its pupa as a moth it has only days to find a mate before it dies.

The larvae of this species are the subject of common folklore, which has it that the severity of a winter can be predicted by the amount of black on the caterpillar. This is the most familiar Woolly Bear in North America. In fact, larvae produced in the same clutch of eggs can vary from mostly red to mostly black, even when reared under the same conditions, and this variability invalidates any temperature-related trends that may otherwise be evident. In fact, the orange band will grow towards the ends of the body, with the black bands decreasing in size, as the larva matures.

Frozen Planet is the icing on the cake of a lifetime of self-dedication. It is visually beautiful, spectacularly revealing, and richly informative. David Attenborough is intent upon making people understand and respect the diversity and integrity of the world in which we live. The world will one day be a poorer place without him.

Here’s what happened according to an unbiased and entirely impartial Standard Note on file at the UK Parliament’s House of Commons Library.

• In 1965 the UK detached the Chagos Archipelago from the then British colony of Mauritius to create a separate colony called the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). Mauritius received a payment of £3 million and the UK undertook to return the Archipelago to Mauritius when it was no longer needed for defence purposes.
• In December 1966 the UK leased the biggest island, Diego Garcia, to the US for an initial period of 50 years. The arrangement will remain in force for a further 20 years beyond 2016 unless either side gives notice to terminate it in the two years before its expiry.
• Between 1968 and 1973 the entire Chagos Archipelago was forcibly cleared of its inhabitants as part of moves to build a US military base on Diego Garcia.
• In 1971 an Immigration Ordinance was enacted that made it unlawful for a person to enter or remain in BIOT without a permit. This formalised in law the removal of the whole of the existing civilian population to Mauritius and established a prohibition on their return.
• Most of the 2,000 Islanders, whose slave ancestors are believed to have been transported to the Archipelago from Madagascar and Mozambique by the French in the late 18th century to work on the coconut plantations, ended up in the slums of Mauritius.
• In the 1970s and early 1980s the UK offered the Chagos Islanders compensation. £650,000 was paid to the Government of Mauritius for the benefit of the Chagossians, in particular to assist their resettlement there.
• In 1982 a further £4 million was paid by the UK Government into a Trust Fund for the benefit of registered Chagossians.
• In 2002, under the British Overseas Territory Act, Chagossians were granted British citizenship if they were born after April 1969 and before January 1983 to a woman who at that time was a citizen of the UK and Colonies by virtue of her birth in BIOT. Third generation Chagossians born outside BIOT were denied this privilege, splitting families whose older members are British citizens but whose younger members are not.
• The two main outstanding disputes arising from these events remain the one between the Chagos Islanders and the UK Government over the legality of their removal and whether they have any rights of return; and the dispute between the UK and Mauritius about the UK’s claim to sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago.

How can we characterize these events? Bribery, deception and betrayal leap to mind. In the 1960s the US wanted a base in the Indian Ocean to counter Soviet expansion, so the US offered the UK an $11 million subsidy on the Polaris submarine nuclear deterrent. The payment was kept secret from both the UK Parliament and the US Congress. There have been lies and cover-ups ever since.

Racism also rears its ugly head. British politicians, diplomats and civil servants pretended there were no permanent inhabitants on the island so that their human rights could be ignored. The official record of the period notes the following by no means isolated exchange between a senior official at the Foreign Office and a British diplomat. “The object of the exercise is to get some rocks which will remain ours… There will be no indigenous population except seagulls…” To which the reply was, “Unfortunately along with the birds go some few Tarzans or Man Fridays whose origins are obscure and who are hopefully being wished on to Mauritius.”

Today, the controversy remains unresolved, as anyone can find out by Googling “Chagos Islands”. In 1992 Kevin Bales published his book Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. In it he wrote:

“Slavery is a booming business and the number of slaves is increasing. People get rich by using slaves. And when they’ve finished with their slaves, they just throw these people away. This is the new slavery, which focuses on big profits and cheap lives. It is not about owning people in the traditional sense of the old slavery, but about controlling them completely. People become completely disposable tools for making money” (p. 4).

Political and economic expediency rides roughshod over human rights and human dignity. Discovering such stories, one realises that journalistic objectivity is one thing, neutrality quite another. One can be objective about the facts, but never neutral about the damage inflicted. This deeply shameful episode in the history of empire demands restitution and redress.

Armenian is spoken in the Republic of Armenia, in the independent but unrecognized state of Nagorno-Karabakh, and among communities in the Armenian Diaspora. It has its own alphabet and script. Early in the 5th century BCE, Classical Armenian, or Grabar, was one of the great languages of the Near East and Asia Minor. Although an autonomous branch within the Indo-European family, it had some affinities to Middle Iranian, Greek and the Balto-Slavic languages, but belonged to none of them. Characterized by a system of inflection, it made flexible and liberal use of combining root words to create derivative and compound words by adding bits on.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, Classical Armenian began to give way to the vernacular language, called Ašxarhabar. The introduction of new literary forms and styles, as well as the many new ideas sweeping Europe, created a need to turn Ašxarhabar into a modern literary language. Since by then numerous dialects had developed in the traditional Armenian regions, two major variants were developed on the basis of common features:

• Western Variant: The influx of immigrants from different parts of the traditional Armenian homeland to Constantinople crystallized the common elements of the regional dialects, paving the way for a style of writing that required a shorter and more flexible learning curve than Grabar.
• Eastern Variant: The dialect of the Ararat plateau provided the primary elements of Eastern Armenian, centred in old Tiflis (now Tbilisi, capital of Georgia). Similar to the Western Armenian variant, the Modern Eastern was in many ways more practical and accessible to the masses than Grabar.

Both versions of Ašxarhabar were enthusiastically promoted. Soon the proliferation of newspapers in both regions and the development of a network of schools dramatically increased literacy rates even in remote rural areas. Literary works entirely written in the modern language increasingly legitimized its existence and by the turn of the 20th century both varieties of modern Armenian had prevailed over Grabar leading to a new and simplified grammatical structure of the language.

More recently, digital communications have given the language a new lease of life through online blogging and discussion. The Internet has provided space for literary and journalistic reflections on crucial public debates, circumventing ineffective state mechanisms of information-sharing. It also helped that UNESCO nominated Yerevan, Armenia’s capital city, as World Book Capital 2012. Some commentators thought this a ludicrous choice, given the absence of a traditional literary marketplace, the shattered library system, extremely limited print runs of books by contemporary Armenian authors, and the general lack of public interest in literature and writers.

But there are signs of hope. The government has seized the opportunity to promote book publishing and is celebrating 500 years of printing. In Venice in 1512, just seven decades after Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press, Hakob Meghapart printed the first book in Grabar and several exhibitions will focus on ancient Armenian books kept in the world’s libraries and museums.

Yerevan World Book Capital 2012 events are emphasising children and young adults as future bearers of knowledge. Many programmes explore the joys of reading, reciting, writing and learning how to publish and print books. Bringing together writers, journalists, publishers, librarians, booksellers and book-lovers, Yerevan World Book Capital 2012 promises to turn over a new leaf in Armenia’s linguistic and literary heritage.

After many years battling local authorities for planning permission, Glyndebourne, founded in 1934 and set deep in the heart of the English countryside, has erected a modern-day windmill amid cheers and jeers. Broadcaster Sir David Attenborough was on hand to inaugurate the very first wind turbine to power a major British arts institution. Now, when a gale “plies the saplings double” at Glyndebourne, it will be turning a £1.5m piece of equipment powering one of today’s hi-tech opera productions.

Gus Christie, the founder’s grandson and now Glyndebourne’s Executive Chairman, first thought of building a wind turbine in 2004. He believes that, over the course of a year, it will generate more than half of Glyndebourne’s electricity requirements, a significant step towards a target of getting 90% of energy from renewable sources. Christie also hopes that other arts organisations and environmental bodies will join forces to find sites for more turbines.

Speaking at the launch ceremony, Attenborough – well known for his support for the environment – said that older people had still not grasped the scale of change essential to avert climate catastrophe. “If people don’t like the rhythmic puffy noise it makes then that’s their choice, but I can’t help feeling such people haven’t really grasped where energy comes from. What do they imagine happens when they turn on a light switch or drive their cars?”

He continued, “For most of my lifetime most power came from burning coal, which killed many hundreds underground and thousands overground from breathing in fumes, and in my memory caused smogs where you could not see your hand in front of your face. It is almost unbelievable to me that we now have the ability to draw the power we need from every gust of wind.”

A dramatic fall in the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions (apparently caused by the 2009 recession) has been marred by the figure for 2010 which shows national emissions rising by 3.1%. The increase, the first in almost a decade, is attributed to home heating during a cold winter and shutdowns at nuclear power stations after technical problems. Wind-power would seem to be an obvious solution.

In 2011 the Duke of Edinburgh criticised the onshore wind turbine industry, calling wind farms “a disgrace” and accusing people who support them of believing in a “fairy tale”. Britain already has more than 3,400 turbines – nearly 3,000 onshore – with another 4,500 soon to be built under plans for wind power to play a more important role in providing Britain’s energy. So airy persiflage of the kind indulged in by ancient royals is unlikely to hold much sway. Wind turbines at Windsor? Not likely!

Plan is one of the world’s oldest and largest international development agencies, working with millions of people around the world to end global poverty. Not for profit, independent and inclusive of all faiths and cultures, Plan has only one agenda: to improve the lives of children. Founded in 1937 by British author and journalist John Langdon-Davies (left) and refugee worker Eric Muggeridge, the original aim was to provide food, shelter and education to children whose lives had been disrupted by the Spanish Civil War.

Plan aims to achieve lasting improvements in the quality of life of children, families and communities in developing countries. It does this through a process of collaboration that unites people across cultures, adding meaning and value to their lives by: enabling children, their families and communities to meet their basic needs and to increase their ability to participate in and benefit from their societies; building relationships to increase understanding and unity among peoples of different cultures and countries; and advocating and promoting the rights and interests of the world’s children, with a special focus on girls’ rights to overcome issues of gender discrimination.

Plan’s work is linked to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1990), which spells out the human rights of all children, including the right to survive; develop to the fullest; be protected from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation; participate fully in family, cultural and social life. By listening to what children have to say about their rights, needs and concerns, Plan encourages and helps children to take an active role in realizing their full potential.

One of Plan’s endeavours is working with communities to improve access to safe drinking water and to raise awareness of the importance of waste management. More than 2.2 million children die every year – four every minute – as a result of diarrhoea caused by poor sanitation and hygiene. Every year Plan helps communities build 2,000 school latrines and in the last three years has helped families and communities build an average 100,000 toilets a year, benefiting several million people. Plan also provides water points in communities and schools, especially in rural areas, and establishes community-based organizations to ensure the ongoing management and maintenance of water.

In 1861 George Eliot published her novel Silas Marner, The Weaver of Raveloe. It explores the issues of redemptive love, community, family and religion. Eliot concerns herself with matters of ethics, which for her exist apart from religion. Although it seems like a simple moral story with a happy ending, Eliot’s text includes several pointed criticisms of the way industrialised society treats people and, especially, children. Writing of the orphaned girl Eppie, whom Silas takes in and cares for, Eliot comments:

“In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child’s.”

Want to help children? Visit http://plancanada.ca/home

American physicist Richard Feynman (left) tells how, as a boy, his father interested him in stamp collecting. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Tuva Republic began issuing postage stamps. The stamps (right) were produced during a brief period of Tuvan independence and had many philatelists in a furore, as they did not conform to philatelic standards. Tannu Tuva now is part of the Russian Federation and lies at the geographical centre of Asia, in southern Siberia. Forests, mountains, and steppe make up a large part of its landscape.

In the late 1970s Tuva was still isolated by its mountainous geography, making it a tempting object of adventure in Feynman’s mind. Determined to find a way to journey to Tuva (right) and see the fabled land of his childhood memories, he researched all the available literature written on Tuva and made plans to go there. Feynman’s fascination with what he imagined as a lost land and his efforts to reach it are chronicled in the book Tuva or Bust! (1991) by Ralph Leighton and the video The Quest For Tannu Tuva: Richard Feynman – The Last Journey of a Genius (1988). Sadly, cancer put paid to his dream.

The captivating memory of my own childhood is Easter Island. Located in the south-eastern Pacific Ocean, Easter Island is a special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888. It is famous for its 887 monumental statues, called moai (left), created by the early Rapanui people. The name “Easter Island” was given by the first recorded European visitor, the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who landed there on Easter Sunday 1722, while searching for another island. The current Polynesian name of the island, Rapa Nui, “Big Rapa”, was coined after the slave raids of the early 1860s.

Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl (of Kon-Tiki fame) led the first archaeological expedition to Easter Island in 1955-56. Noting that at some unidentified date prior to 380 CE the first settlers landed on Easter Island – discovering a verdant island covered by trees, shrubs, and palms – Heyerdahl proved that there were three separate epochs in the island’s history. Archaeologists have named them Early, Middle and Late Periods. In the Early Period there was no production of giant statues, only altar-like elevations of very large, precisely cut and joined stones, erected with their façades towards the ocean and a sunken court on the inland side. They were astronomically oriented and constructed by highly specialised stone masons who mapped the annual movement of the sun in their religious architecture.

Not until the Second Period were the well known Giant Statues quarried and placed on the platforms. Archaeologists believe that during this period, around 1100 CE, the Birdman Cult marked the beginning of the large ancestor statues. Over less than six centuries, more than 600 giant statues were carved from quarries after the forests had been cleared. At the peak of statue production islanders were able to erect statues up to 40 feet tall, weighing more than 80 tons, and balance a red stone cylinder hat, weighing up to 12 tons, on top of its head.

Today, Easter Island is a tourist destination and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But it retains its mystery, only partly explained, perhaps, in books and documentaries. One of the best is The Lost Gods of Easter Island, a BBC documentary written and presented by Sir David Attenborough. First transmitted in 2000, it sets out to discover if a carved wooden figurine really came from the island French ethnographer Alphonse Pinart – in his book Voyage à l’Île de Pâques (1877) – called the “Navel of the World”.

In December 1878 Van Gogh (1853-90) went to the village of Wasmes in the grim coal-mining region in southern Belgium called the Borinage. With virtually no money, he lived a life of abject poverty, even giving his own clothes to the poor. He stayed in a farmer’s house (left) which is now dilapidated, with its windows boarded up. The rear extension has lost part of its roof and is in danger of collapsing. Legal measures are being taken by the local authority to purchase the dilapidated building. The plan is to restore it and open it to visitors from 2015, the year when the neighbouring city of Mons will be European Capital of Culture.

Van Gogh felt an affinity for the lives of the local peasants and miners. Van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo described the terrible working conditions:

“Everywhere around one sees the big chimneys and the immense heaps of coal at the entrance to the mines … Most of the miners are thin and pale from fever and look tired and emaciated, weather-beaten and prematurely aged, the women as a whole faded and worn. Round the mine are poor miners’ huts with a few smoke-blackened dead trees, thorn-hedges, dunghills, ash heaps, slag.”

He once spent six hours down a mine, guided by a man who had worked there all his life. Underground he discovered how the men worked in little cubicles, likening them to “cells in a beehive … or like the partitions in a crypt.” He saw children loading coal on horse-drawn carts by the light of lamps, nursed victims of explosions, cave-ins, fire and disease. He preached in an old dance hall, started a Bible school and – for a time – thought he had discovered his vocation.

Concerned about his welfare, Theo visited his brother to persuade him to return to city-life. Vincent subsequently went through a long period of intense crisis, remaining in the Borinage – although it is not known how he managed to feed and clothe himself. When he resurfaced, his religious fanaticism had vanished and he had decided to become an artist.

Van Gogh moved to another cottage in the village of Cuesmes (right) – today restored and open to visitors – where he set up a “studio” in the bedroom he shared with the small children of a miner. He paid the rent with money sent by his father and set to work to teach himself the techniques of art. Theo forwarded sheaves of prints for him to study and copy as well as textbooks on anatomy and perspective. Vincent responded by making sketches of the coal-miners and their surroundings, launching himself on a brief but brilliant career that ended just 12 years later in the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise, north-west of Paris.