No need to Bragg
Prying journalists, sometimes I wish I wasn't one. Melvyn Bragg, Lord Bragg, has bravely exposed himself in his new semi-autobiographical novel 'Crossing the Lines' and I'm here to probe even deeper. The book moves from wartime to the 1950s when the young hero Joe finds himself at a time of change in the new world of Oxford. Bragg, like his contemporary Joe, was born in the northern English town of Wigton and read History at Wadham. There are inevitable comparisons. ...
Features: The Python's Tale
The quiet-looking, bookish man who appears entirely in place browsing the shelves in the Blackwell's on Broad Street is a far cry from the chaotic spectacle that was Monty Python's Flying Circus. Terry Jones, known for the regularity with which he donned skirts and headscarves to play 'mother' figures such as The Virgin Mandy in 'Life of Brian', and described by John Cleese as being the driving energy behind the Python phenomenon, is now finding his creative outlet in medieval history and in that bastion of the Oxford English Literature degree, Chaucer....
Features: Money-makers among us
There's a great bit in Jeffrey Archer's Kane and Abel where William Kane, son of generations of well-heeled Boston bankers, makes a fortune from trading cards with his school friends. He gets in early, finds his market, and sells up before the bottom falls out. Was this, I ask Bob Goodson, how it was for you? Were you born an entrepreneur?...
Features: mathematics / (plot+style)
Every now and then there comes a book that aims to take something that is out of reach of your average Joe Public, water it down and then dish it out in steaming bowlfuls of comprehensive prose. The most recent and popular example of this (that I can think of!) is Simon Singh's book Fermat's Last Theorem. Here was a book that took its subject matter and made it readable - for most - with a blend of anecdotes dealing with science and humanity. Not only did the book enlighten the casual reader of a major breakthrough in the usually exclusive mathematics scene, but it also broke down some of the stereotypes that most have of that scene.
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Features: The American D:Ream?
"You have got to be kidding me... this cannot be real," says the naïve man to himself as he arrives two hours before the assigned start of the extended-wait process that has prematurely manifested itself in a line that already stretches around the Georgia Dome. In two days 11,000 aspiring singers aged between 16 to 24 will shuffle onto this football field in order to begin the regional auditions for American Idol 2003. No, Dante had no idea how many levels of Hell there could be. ...