Wide ranging, and subscribing to the school of ‘curiouser and curiouser’, Angus Trumble’s exploration of the finger is an enjoyable, entertaining book.

The finger is involved in many diverse and fascinating aspects of art, language and cultural practice throughout history and is of course ongoing in its influence. Well researched, and with so many diverse side trips into all manner of subjects, this book delights the inner dilettante. It delves into literary references, physiology and anatomy, art, language, fashion (nail polish and gloves), culture (play and combat) and the peculiarities of the thumb.

Elizabethan gauntlets to Michael Jackson’s white glove, slender nails on Spanish nobles to hot pink nail polish on Marilyn Monroe, counting the days in a month, communicating hand signals of eleventh-century monks to contemporary Italy, the beauty of classical Indian dance to a lethal karate chop, expressing pleasure or displeasure, the genetic similarity of fingers to genitals – these references are but a tiny sample of the straightforward and regular to the obscure and esoteric to be found in The Finger.