Belly and brain, intestines and intellect: western thought insistently distinguishes the physical from the mental, even as it knows them to be related. Steven Shapin’s new book, Eating and Being ranges from Socrates to slow food, by way of Plutarch, Montaigne, Shakespeare and the American home economics movement, as it traces significant shifts and surprising continuities in writings about diet, health and the good life.

Is it necessary to have the window open when listening to the new device?’ asked Edith Davidson, the wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1923, referring to the latest fashionable contraption, the wireless. We might laugh – but it does take time for the older generation to catch up with new technology.

The halls of power in Washington and Moscow are buzzing with talk of great power politics and the end of the war against Ukraine. On paper, three years of war have brought little benefit to Vladimir Putin. In exchange for hundreds of thousands of casualties and an economy on the brink, Russia now possesses a chunk of territory in the east of Ukraine.

In December 1936, “Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism” opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibition featured everything from Arcimboldo’s mannerist profile “Summer” (1563) to Disney animation, the “art of children” and the “art of the insane” (according to official diagnoses, at least).

US founding father Thomas Jefferson used dumbwaiters — small lifts that carry meals — during his extravagant dinners. There seemed to be no human intervention, but the lifts were operated by enslaved basement staff. As sociologist Antonio Casilli acutely observes, today too, artificial-intelligence systems are made to seem automated, often by overlooked and underpaid workers.

Since it became independent in 1929, Vatican City has been the world’s smallest state. Every evening the gates close, leaving behind only 500 permanent residents. I once spent a week behind the walls as a guest in the Santa Marta hostel where the Pope lives; at night the deserted courtyards are thrillingly spooky.

When the BBC was founded in 1922 it was not completely clear what it was for. ‘If there is any news’, explained an early edition of the Radio Times helpfully, ‘it will be broadcast at 9pm’.

At the close of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, the eponymous revenant representing the deepest traumas of slavery’s violence has finally left the house she haunted. After a while, even her recurring footprints are forgotten: “by and by all trace is gone”. She is not simply forgotten but “disremembered and unaccounted for”.

There is much to unpick from the title alone of My Country, Africa: Autobiography of the Black Pasionaria. The reference to Africa as a country describes the pan-Africanist philosophy of Andree Blouin, a mixed heritage woman born in the Central African Republic. It is important to understand that Blouin’s support for pan-Africanism — as she appears to interpret it, as a United States of Africa — does not mean she was a socialist. She was not.

This volume covers 800 years of Māori art, exploring a range of art practices including raranga (plaiting), whatu (weaving), moko (tattooing), and whakairo (carving). The volume, written by a trio of Māori art historians, took 12 years to complete and focuses on “exploring the idea of Indigenous art histories that value Indigenous voices, perspective and objectives, making art history more relevant and less Eurocentric”, the authors say.