It’s not often you find top ten best selling popular fiction set in Carluke. Yet here we have it in the latest outing from Quintin Jardine (http://www.quintinjardine.com/). This is a story of a man’s quest for justice at any cost. The summary is as follows. It’s 1818 in Carluke, Lanarkshire. Mathew Fleming returns home to […]
Andrew Roberts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Roberts_(historian)) would be the first to point out that there are already thousands of studies of Napoleon already in print (the British Library catalogue lists 13,000 items with the word ‘Napoleon’ in the title field). It takes some guts and ambition, therefore, to seek to add to that number. Fortunately we’re in the hands
Napoleon the Great Read More »
As J.D. Robb, prolific author Nora Roberts (http://www.nora-roberts.co.uk/) has published a series of futuristic science fiction police procedurals. These books, all part of the “In Death” series, feature NYPSD Detective Eve Dallas and her husband Roarke. They are set in a mid-21st century New York City. Despite the emphasis on solving a crime in each of the books, the
100,000 years ago, at least six species of humanoid inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Homo Sapiens. How did our species survive and prosper up to the position we hold today? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations, and
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari Read More »
Nothing is more natural than to believe we have conscious control over our own choices. Indeed most of social behaviour including the criminal justice system is predicated on that conviction. What, though, if that presumption is simply not true? Professor Dick Swabb (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Swaab) argues that everything we think, do, and refrain from doing is determined by our
We Are Our Brains by Dick Swaab Read More »
Ruth Rendell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Rendell and http://literature.britishcouncil.org/ruth-rendell) is a phenomenally successful crime writer. She probes deeply into the psychological background of criminals and their victims, many of them mentally afflicted or otherwise socially isolated. She has (at the last count) 74 titles to her name covering crime novels, novellas, and short stories (some under the pen name of Barbara
The Girl Next Door Read More »
I was alerted to this recent publication by hearing Roger Scruton (http://www.roger-scruton.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Scruton ) on the radio last week. The publisher’s outline is as follows. In The Soul of the World, renowned philosopher Roger Scruton defends the experience of the sacred against today’s fashionable forms of atheism. He argues that our personal relationships, moral intuitions, and aesthetic
The Soul of the World by Roger Scruton Read More »
This is one for those of you concerned with the environment. There is no doubt we are trashing our planet and that current levels of consumption are unsustainable. Alarm over the contribution of affluent lifestyles to global warming and environmental destruction is combining with growing disquiet over the damage affluence does to consumers themselves. Consumerism
The Politics and Pleasures of Consuming Differently by Kate Soper Read More »
In 1980 I read ‘The Problem of Pain‘ (1940) by C.S. Lewis. It is essentially a defence of Christian doctrine – and the assertion of a loving God – in the face of ubiquitous suffering. It left many unresolved questions in my mind about the nature and existence of pain. Why, for example does pain have
The Story of Pain by Joanna Bourke Read More »
