A NEW book offers a literary history of the smells and childhood memories that belong to the Black Country. Smell, Memory, and Literature in the Black Country, by University of Wolverhampton academics Sebastian Groes and R. M. Francis, explores the relationship between distinct smells from the region and emotional childhood memories. Prefaced by Will Self and drawing on psychology, neuroscience, memory studies, literary studies and philosophy, the book contains many creative writing pieces by writers including Anthony Cartwright, Narinder Dhami, Stourbridge author Kerry Hadley-Pryce and Stourbridge poet Wendy Crickard. It also includes a chapter by Sebastian Groes and psychologist Tom Mercer on regional ‘smell-memory’ experiments carried out at Wolverhampton Art Gallery where members of the public were invited to take part in a psychological study to find out about specific smells unique to the Black Country and the detail of childhood memories associated with those pa