Michael Taylor (2024)

How dinosaurs drove the development of the theory of evolution – and a lot more.

It’s hard to credit that the first dinosaurs were only discovered at the end of the 18th century. They emerged into a world that had little doubt about the literal truth of biblical creation. They helped to shatter that certainty, although not alone and not at once.

This is a book that itself shatters several myths. It shows how Victorian scientists were as religious as their fellow citizens – and often more so – and how their faith coloured their interpretations of the evidence they themselves were discovering. It describes a Darwin too afraid of the possible social consequences ot publish his theories of natural selection as they are formed, and indeed he doesn’t publish them until he’s slowly built up his reputation as a naturalist through more traditional means: a level of patience that would be unthinkable today. And it shows that his interactions with Alfred Russel Wallace – often described as his rival – were marked by kindness and high regard on both sides, with Wallace modestly content in taking a supporting role (and later being a pallbearer at Darwin’s interrment in Westminster Abbey).

Over the source of the 19th century the religious certainties are challenged successfully, but there was nothing inevitable about the triumph and the opponents absolutely did not go quietly. Atheism remained the last taboo: long after Catholics and non-confirmist Protestants had their civil and political rights restored, atheists still had to fight to be allowed to take seats in Parliament. Taylor presents this as part of the conflict driven by the dinosaurs and the scientific changes their discovery drove, and it’s hard to argue with him.

There are some fascinating vignettes. My favourite is when Alfred Russel Wallace takes a bet to show the earth is not flat, and devises an ingenious method that of course doesn’t rely on any modern technology or arguments, but which is self-evidently correct. That there are still many flat-earthers even today is testament to the abiding need to keep pressing for science and evidence in public life.

5/5. Finished Tuesday 20 May, 2025.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Siobhan Roberts (2015)

A playful biography of one of the most creative mathematicians of modern times.

Both the title and sub-title are plays on words, which I’m sure Conway himself enjoyed. He is seen here as a genius playing with ideas, but his genius manifested itself through games, of which he was a prolific inventor; he was curious about everything he encountered, but was also unusual in the ways in which his mind approached challenges and indeed in what he saw as challenges.

It’s hard to read that Conway ended up hating his best-known invention, the Game of Life, when it’s been so influential on mathematicians, computer scientists, and the public at large. He saw it as the least amongst his discoveries, and indeed that’s an opinion that’s hard to fault: his discoveries in number theory, group theory, game theory, and other fields have been hugely influential, and each alone would have justified his fame. But they were also so technical as to be confined to a narrow group of specialists even within those specialist fields, whereas Life has achieved a life of its own in the popular imagination, it’s only real rival being the Mandelbrot set.

The Conway who emerges here would, I think, have been enormous fun to know and talk with – as long as you didn’t actually have to work with him or get anything from him, in which case he would be a frustrating and unpredictable collaborator. His several books were written with collaborators who needed patience to deal with him and get him to finish his commitments: they probably only hung-in with him because of a determination to give him the credit he was due. (It’s interesting that two collaborators once dealt with this by removing him as a co-author and instead putting his name in the paper’s title!) He was similarly unpredictable as a speaker, sometimes incredbly charismatic and sometimes failing terribly due to lack of preparation: never a sighn of someone who cares about their audience, although he clearly did care desperately, at least sometimes.

Conway’s was a talent that the scientific world needs, not content to stay with a single field but contributing widely and thereby bringing his wider expertise to bear on problems that might otherwise have remained unexplored. There’s a confidence in such an approach that’s sometimes hard to summon-up in today’s academia, which rewards increasigly incremental contributions of increasingly narrow depth. Conway was aware of this, but chose (or felt compelled by his own nature) to ignore it, and that’s admirable in itself.

4/5. Finished Saturday 10 May, 2025.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Chantry Westwell (2021)

If you love mediaeval illumination, this book is a feast. It covers a huge period, focusing mainly on the 14th and 15th centuries, discussing manuscripts collected together by broad themes: love stories, bestiaries, histories, and the like. In the process it also elaborates the underlying stories, so that the illumination makes sense. A lot of these are intricate and deserving whole books in themselves (which many have had, of course): different manuscripts use different variants of the same underlying myths. I was unfamiliar with most of the detail.

But it’s the illustrations that are the jewels, of course. Westwell works at the British Library, and so has access to one of the world’s largest collections of illuminated manuscripts. The individual letters, borders, and marginal drawings are a complete joy to explore, often with several manuscripts on a common theme set side by side to show the evolution of style and the ways in which the illuminators were thinking about their subjects. Together with the often rude and/or surreal images common to the period, this is a book I will be coming back t time and again.

5/5. Finished Monday 28 April, 2025.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Sara Lodge (2024)

An popular distillation of a deep study of the literature and history of female detectives in fact and fiction. (Full disclosure: Lodge is a colleague of mine at St Andrews, although we’ve never met.)

The genesis of the book comes from Lodge reading two fictional accounts of lady detectives written in 1862: what suddenly brought this about? She discovers a rich seam of “dime” or “penny dreadful” novels that feature lady sleuths as protagonists, as well as – less well-known umtil now – an enormous number of plays that were performed to large audiences. A further search of newspaper archives reveals that private investigation agencies (which proliferated after the wider legalisation of divorce in the mid 19th century) often boasted of employing female detectives – the profession that overlaps considerably with that of actress, with both requiring creativity and confidence. (There is also considerable overlap with sex work.)

The most revealing observations in this book are the way it interprets the interactions of detectives with class, gender, and other social identities. While fictional lady detectives were middle class and solved complex middle-class crimes, in reality lady detectives were more typically working class and engaged in finding material to support a divorce or supporting the prosection of working-class crimes like fortune-telling. Many were wives of police officers, and were often mothers – or were presented as such in the press in order to make them more sympathetic. Some became quite well-known either through their own accomplishments or by being reported by (typically) male writers.

Many, both fictional and real, lived lives that sat outside the usually strict gender expectations, making them both useful examples for early suffragettes and aspirational figures for those who felt trapped in their positions. Some were clearly gay. But in good Victorian tradition the fictional female detectives frequently ended the book married (often to an intellectually outclassed husband), with the normal social order restored.

All in all this is an accessible presentation of work that’s full of academic rigour and a deep knowledge of the literature, press, and vernacular of the time. It certainly a book that makes me want to read some of the authors mentioned, few of whom (with the exception of Wilkie Collins) have any modern visibility at all.

4/5. Finished Saturday 26 April, 2025.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Ben Macintyre (2016)

The early history of the SAS, told with lots of references to the soldiers’ own recollections.

It’s hard to imagine now how revolutionary David Stirling’s ideas were in the 1940s. To remove warefare from the structured set-pieces of the First World War and replace them with a more fluid form that emphasised small strike teams causing havoc behind the recognised front lines, and forcing the enemy to respond by taking troops away from the main battles, was revolutionary. It’s hardly surprising that it was fiercely contested within the military – or that it suffered failures ranging from catastrophic to hilarious on the way to its final success.

The characters who emerged were clearly unsuited to structured military life, while at the same time being ideally suited to unstructured raiding. The fact that they managed to cohere as a unit is a massive tribute to David (and Bill) stirling, Paddy Mayne, and the other visionary officers and men in the early cadres.

The most interesting thing for me in this book was how much the war, and the SAS’ perception of it, changed over time: from the desert to the countryside and towns of France and Germany, as the war became more vicious and close-quarter. Macintyre doesn’t shy-away from reporting behaviours that would nowadays, in retrospect, be regarded as war crimes, from both sides: something that’s not been dealt with thoroughly until quite recently in the histories of the Second World War. None of that changes or tarnishes the heroism on show: in many ways it serves to highlight the times when the officers in charge chose to act scrupulously, to consciously differentiate themselves from their enemy.

5/5. Finished Sunday 6 April, 2025.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)