In Hackney, the London borough where I live, “hipster” is an essential bit of anthropological vocabulary. For they are everywhere, and come in various subclassifications. But where does this term-of-art, associated closely with East London and the trendier bits of many cities, actually come from? The poppy fields of India, apparently. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century those who smoked opium, the powerful drug derived from the poppy, did so while resting on one hip. This preferred drug-taking posture came to America via immigration from China, where opium smoking had taken off in the nineteenth century, then became a favourite of some famous jazz musicians in the twentieth. Jazz equals cool, equals “hipster”: voila!