Vade Mecum brings together Richard Skinner s best essays, reviews and interviews from 1992-2014. There are close critical engagements with writers (Kazuo Ishiguro, Italo Calvino, Shakespeare s The Tempest) and composers (Erik Satie, Iannis Xenakis, Luc Ferrari), meditations on films and filmmakers (Antonioni, Krzysztof Kie lowski, Chinatown) and idiosyncratic reflections on Werner Herzog s Of Walking in Ice and Steely Dan."