'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 Kielowski, Chinatown) and idiosyncratic reflections on Werner Herzog's 'Of Walking in Ice' and 'Steely Dan'.