Book Review: Steaming to Victory - How Britain's Railways won the War, by Michael WilliamsI'm a bit behind on book reviews, as I finished this over a week ago. This is the second of two books I bought at the National Railway Museum in York a couple of years ago, coincidentally both by the same author ( Read more... )

Dad was passing through on Friday, after a holiday in Dorset. Looking for venues close to his travel route, we'd originally intended to go to Nymans, but the weather was poor, so we opted for Chartwell instead. It was quite busy but not overwhelmingly so, and we had a look at some of the gardens, the studio (now housing a number of Churchill's ( Read more... )

Book Review: The Astronomer and the Witch, by Ulinka RublackIt's always a bonus to find a book on my wish list in the work book sale, and when I spotted this copy of the tale of Katharina Kepler's trial for witchcraft and the defence conducted by her son Johannes Kepler, I snapped it up. Coincidentally it was a good partner for my recent trip to ( Read more... )

Book Review: The Golden Age of Murder, by Martin Edwards
Subtitled The mystery of the writers who invented the modern detective story, this book follows the formation and history of the Detection Club from 1930 through to the post-war era ( Read more... )

Book Review: The Passage to Europe - How a Continent Became a Union, by Luuk van Middelaar
I picked this up in the work book sale before Christmas.

The Prologue is a bit turgid and, for me, borders on what Michael Shermer refers to as woo-woo nonsense, but fortunately, once past that, the remainder of the book is a fairly straightforward history ( Read more... )

Book Review: Attlee - A Life in Politics, by Nicklaus Thomas-SymondsI had something of an itch to scratch since encountering background noise among Corbynistas, comparing their man to Clement Attlee, so this was a Christmas present very much in the style of Lord Reith. It feels like a thorough work, dealing briefly with Attlee's comfortable late ( Read more... )

Book Review: The Incarnations, by Susan BarkerThis was a random selection from the work book sale. Admittedly the picture of Chinese mountains on the cover was a draw, and the promotional cover sheet made it sound interesting ( Read more... )

Book Review: Admiral Collingwood - Nelson's Own Hero, by Max Adams
When I spotted this at the work book sale I picked it up immediately, as previously I had only read a rather slim volume on the man. This work, originally produced in 2005 to coincide with the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, covers much the same ground, though it mostly ( Read more... )

Book Review: Colossus - Bletchley Park's Greatest Secret, by Paul Gannon
This has been on my shelves for way too long. I've discovered that the best way to manage - physically and electronically - is to add to my to-read tag in Goodreads, so things don't get forgotten.

In The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, Sydney Padua mentioned ( Read more... )

Yesterday afternoon we headed to the Science Museum for the Cosmonauts exhibition. It's interesting to reflect on just how much of the Space Race was won by the USSR; perhaps we tend to focus on the Apollo programme Moon landings not just because they were the pinnacle of human achievement, but also because they happened to be the thing the USA ( Read more... )