Why size does matter: our fascination with tiny things

Non-fiction: In Miniature, Simon Garfield Canongate, hardback, 304 pages, €18

The world's biggest model railway: Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, Germany. Photo by Joern Pollex

Lewis Jones

'A small thing," wrote Lucretius, "may give an analogy of great things, and show the tracks of knowledge." Lucretius had in mind atoms, rather than model villages, but his observation might have served as an epigraph for Simon Garfield's new book, which argues that the miniature "shows us how to see, learn and appreciate more with less".

He begins with the opening of the Eiffel Tower in 1889, which effectively showed the city of Paris in miniature - his book is about scale, he explains, not size - and prompted the first factory-made scale models in cast iron; it was also available in pastry and chocolate. And it looms over his narrative.