This Columbus Day, let’s lose the phones and celebrate getting lost

Centuries after Christopher lost his way, today is an opportunity to defend our need for privacy and solitude - increasingly difficult in the age of GPS

Columbus Day, we are told, commemorates a discovery - but of what, exactly?

Not the American continent, upon which human civilisation was already flourishing before any doughty Genoan ever set boot on the Bahamas. Nor was it a new transatlantic route: Columbus was beaten to that particular punch by a Swede, several Vikings and possibly even an Irish priest named Brendan.