WRITE ABOUT WHAT you know,' is the advice our Enghsh teachers always give us. And I wonder how many spWheads have, at some time or another, found themselves musing after their fifth or sixth fat one how cool it would be to write a definitive history of marijuana. No, like, seriously, right, just think what fin you'd have researchmg it and, like, you could write it all off against tax and there's so much to sav - I mean you've got the Assassins and, er, Howard Marks, and wasn't George Washington a splifiead or am 1 thinlung of someone else?

Bad luck guys. Martin Booth has beaten vou to it with Cannabis: A History, and I'm afraid it's so good that no one wdl need to do another for at least f3iy years. I don't know whether he's a vothead or not but he certai& writes like one: close attention to mesmerising: detail. fantastical " digressions, lots of jokes and wry asides that give you the giggles. There are so many brilliant bits that I iust don't know where to begin.

How about the amazing true story of how it was that hashish first caught on in modern Europe? It turns out