Books - On that day, in that moment, memory had no valid part to play.

Remembrance Day: In Search of Lost Time

Juliet Nicolson

On the eve of Remembrance Day, historian Juliet Nicolson reflects on the consolations of memory – and recalls her father’s last, raw regrets

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Truly valuable memories, the kind that deliver an instant punch of return to a single moment long ago, are not always prompted by photograph albums or brought back by some elusive mental struggle to remember the detail of the past. Cleaner, more rounded recollections come rushing at you from embedded sensations: a taste, touch, smell, sight or sound that perhaps seemed insignificant at the time, but can be ignited unexpectedly decades later by the simplest of experiences. It is Proust, of course, who best describes how memories are most effectively triggered by the senses rather than the intellect. “The smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls,” he writes in Swann’s Way, the first book of À la recherche du temps perdu, “ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest.” The hippocampus – the area of the brain where all sensory information is gathered and processed – ensures, for example, that if the taste-trigger is activated, then some or all of the other neighbouring senses will respond and deliver a visualised and amplified memory. It is as if the entire body of some formidable sea creature lying somnolent beneath a muddy surface can be stirred into action by the simple tweak of his tail.

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Read more: www.telegraph.co.uk