Reviews

“Scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we’re all just cavemen with briefcases, hungry for a wise person to tell us stories” – Alan Kay. This quote called out to me in Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind. Not least because Alan Kay is a genius who embodies many of the virtues [...]

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The opening chapter of Francis Spufford’s book, The Backroom Boys, is titled “Flying Spitfires to the stars.” That says everything about the book. It’s a mix of nostalgia for an imagined past where Brits invented stuff and changed the world and hope for an imagined future where Brits do, well, pretty much the same [...]

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“How would you like to be a spy?” This is how Stella Rimington was first recruited into the Security Service (popularly known as MI5) in the 1960s. Things are a bit different now, with the Service running regular recruitment ads in my local paper and elsewhere. Many of the changes that have happened were the [...]

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I’ve been on a sci-fi kick recently and I’ve been astounded by the quality of the writing in some of the books I’ve read. The most notable in this regard is Samuel Delany’s Babel-17. This re-released 1967 masterpiece features a cool heroine in a spectacular space opera. Part poet, part space pilot, her mission [...]

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Colonel John Boyd (USAF) told people that they had a choice: they could be somebody or they could do something. Being somebody meant playing by the rules and getting promoted. Doing something was John Boyd speciality. With virtually no power other than his convictions and persuasiveness he changed air combat, instigated the F-16 fighter [...]

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Michael Collins went to the moon with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin but didn’t land. Perhaps the most famous man you’ve never heard of, he circled the moon alone in the command module while they explored the surface. His autobiography – not ghosted – is the best astronaut book I’ve read. I think anyone [...]

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Tom Jones is a veteran of four Space Shuttle missions. This book is a first hand account of what the right stuff looked like in the 80s and 90s. It is well written and, unlike many astronaut memoirs, not ghosted. Jones succeeds in describing the experience of space flight and putting the reader in the [...]

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Count Belisariusby Robert Graves is a fictional biography of a historical general. It has all the verve of I, Claudius but it is set in a much less familiar world – 6th century Byzantium and its eastern empire. Equal parts love story, military history and court intrigue, this novel is at turns exciting, moving [...]

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