Francis O’Gorman’s new book centres on his belief that people in the 21st century are detaching themselves from the past to their detriment. He examines the ways we forget: the erasure of memory that comes with age, and the modern impulse to untether ourselves from the places we came from, orienting ourselves instead towards the future, with scant regard for history and its lessons.

O’Gorman (whose last published work was a history of worrying) writes with a crisp and elegant, if occasionally high-handed, tone. He explores the role of cultural memory in classical society and the west’s shifting relationship with history across the centuries. He looks at the emergence of a culture of forgetting, a desire to overwrite and wipe clean.

Cultural memory, he argues, shapes our sense of time and connectedness to one another on a local and global level. By “winding down the portcullis” on the past, we risk closing our minds.

• Forgetfulness: Making the Modern Culture of Amnesia by Francis O’Gorman is published by Bloomsbury (£14). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99