Frank
Close, himself a distinguished physicist, gives a unique insight into the life
of the “atom spy” Klaus Fuchs, who provided the USSR with the secrets of the
atomic bomb.
Although the science
doesn’t intrude, the authoritative background makes the book a gripping read
(or listen!) from which I learned a lot.
The astonishing incompetence of the “security” experts who let a known
communist sympathizer join the Manhattan Project, and the polite way he was
handled when his treachery was discovered makes you wonder how we ever won the
war.
'Everything about this story is astounding' Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times
"Trinity" was the codename for the test explosion of the atomic bomb in New Mexico on 16 July 1945. Trinity is now also the extraordinary story of the bomb's metaphorical father, Rudolf Peierls; his intellectual son, the atomic spy, Klaus Fuchs, and the ghosts of the security services in Britain, the USA and USSR.
Against the background of pre-war Nazi Germany, the Second World War and the following Cold War, the book traces how Peierls brought Fuchs into his family and his laboratory, only to be betrayed. It describes in…
Everybody
knows the name of Richard III, the short-lived king of England whose defeat ushered
in the Tudor dynasty. But the story everyone
knows and argues about is his time as king and the fate of the “princes in the
tower.”
Michael Hicks tells the story of
Richard’s life before he became king, his loyal support for his brother Edward
IV, the political scheming that made him the ruler of the north of England, and
his reforming zeal, which might have transformed the country had he lived.
Nothing like Shakespeare’s caricature
(written to please the Tudors!), Richard emerges as a complex and fundamentally
decent man of his time, whose story deserved this telling.
An "excellent new biography" (Keith Thomas, New York Review of Books) of the wily and formidable prince who unexpectedly became monarch-the most infamous king in British history
"An intricately detailed account of Richard's every recorded move on his journey from younger son of the powerful Duke of York to the last of England's mediaeval monarchs."-Mark Jones, Albion Magazine
The reign of Richard III, the last Yorkist king and the final monarch of the Plantagenet dynasty, marked a turning point in British history. But despite his lasting legacy, Richard only ruled as king for the final two years of his life.…
An old favourite that I re-read on
a train journey.
It should have been the
last of Rankin’s Rebus novels, with the eponymous policeman retiring at the end
of the story, although the author revived him a few years later. It is the usual mixture of mayhem and a little
mystery set in the underworld of Edinburgh, with the usual protagonists.
Re-reading any of the Rebus books is like curling
up under a warm blanket. You know what is
going to happen, but you are happy, to mix the metaphor, to go along for the ride.
It's late autumn in Edinburgh and late autumn in the career of Detective Inspector John Rebus. As he tries to tie up some loose ends before retirement, a murder case intrudes. A dissident Russian poet has been found dead in what looks like a mugging gone wrong. By apparent coincidence a high-level delegation of Russian businessmen is in town, keen to bring business to Scotland. The politicians and bankers who run Edinburgh are determined that the case should be closed quickly and clinically. But the further they dig, the more Rebus and his colleague DS Siobhan Clarke become convinced that…
