Brenda Maddox
Maybe He Does Play Dice
Einstein: His Life and Universe
By Walter Isaacson
Simon & Schuster 494pp £25
With his wild hair, merry eyes, baggy T-shirt and sockless ankles, Albert Einstein (1879–1955) looked the way the world wants a scientist to look. ‘Why does everybody love me when nobody understands me?’ he puzzled. Some of the explanation for his celebrity may lie in a gift for aphorism that has been compared to Oscar Wilde's.
As Walter Isaacson reminds us in this brilliant biography, rich with newly available archival material, Einstein was unquestionably a genius. His great discoveries were the result of ‘thought experiments’. No equipment needed. Just an empty room and time to think. What might it be like to ride at the speed
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It wasn’t until 1825 that Pepys’s diary became available for the first time. How it was eventually decrypted and published is a story of subterfuge and duplicity.
Kate Loveman tells the tale.
Kate Loveman - Publishing Pepys
Kate Loveman: Publishing Pepys
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Arthur Christopher Benson was a pillar of the Edwardian establishment. He was supremely well connected. As his newly published diaries reveal, he was also riotously indiscreet.
Piers Brendon compares Benson’s journals to others from the 20th century.
Piers Brendon - Land of Dopes & Tories
Piers Brendon: Land of Dopes & Tories - The Benson Diaries: Selections from the Diary of Arthur Christopher Benson by Eamon Duffy & Ronald Hyam (edd)
literaryreview.co.uk
Of the siblings Gwen and Augustus John, it is Augustus who has commanded most attention from collectors and connoisseurs.
Was he really the finer artist, asks Tanya Harrod, or is it time Gwen emerged from her brother’s shadow?
Tanya Harrod - Cut from the Same Canvas
Tanya Harrod: Cut from the Same Canvas - Artists, Siblings, Visionaries: The Lives and Loves of Gwen and Augustus John by Judith Mackrell
literaryreview.co.uk