Perfumes: The Guide

Perfumes: The Guide is the reference work of modern perfume criticism, written by Luca Turin, a biophysicist best known for his contested vibration theory of olfaction, and Tania Sanchez, a perfume critic - the two are also married collaborators. Turin's project began as the French-language Parfums (Hermé, 1992, revised 1994); the English-language edition, co-written with Sanchez, appeared in 2008 via Viking in the US and Profile Books in the UK.

Each entry rates a fragrance on a one-to-five-star scale with a signed, often blunt written verdict, ranging from a one-line put-down to a multi-paragraph essay. The 2009 UK paperback, retitled Perfumes: The A-Z Guide, added over 400 new reviews to the original roughly 1,500, bringing the total to around 1,900. It was taken seriously by the UK press as literary criticism rather than shopping copy: the Spectator's Philip Hensher called it 'an unexpected classic of criticism', the Daily Mail's Jan Moir found it 'as gripping as any thriller', and the Times praised its 'lyrical and acerbically witty' prose.

A decade on, Turin and Sanchez published Perfumes: The Guide 2018, their first fully new edition, adding roughly 1,200 further reviews covering fragrances released between 2008 and 2018, plus retrospective essays on the intervening decade. Worth flagging for UK buyers: this 2018 edition was released independently (via the Estonian imprint Perfüümista OÜ) rather than through the original mainstream UK/US publisher, so it is less commonly stocked in UK bookshops than the 2008/2009 editions.

The book's enduring appeal is speed and personality: a clear star rating plus a memorable line of verdict, from two people with real expertise, even where you end up disagreeing with them.