We have all experienced nostalgia, that peculiarly painful but nonetheless irresistible sensation of not just remembering the past, but of dwelling on it, circling around it and experiencing again its bittersweet, close-yet-distant otherness. We may be nostalgic for our personal pasts – remembering a golden sun-soaked day of childhood or a beloved city lived and left behind – or for collective memories – a moment of national celebration, an old television series or even a whole historical era. Yet, despite this ubiquity, nostalgia has long had, and retains, a slightly disreputable air, and even a taint of the sickroom.