Steven Johnson writes about something I vaguely knew about — London’s Broad Street cholera outbreak of 1854. This is the story of how it was identified that cholera was somehow water-borne, as opposed to the previous beliefs that it was somehow carried by the smells or miasma of the urban filth. The commonly understood legend [...]

Or, in reference to it’s previous name, the Hancock… I thought it was you… The Hancock Museum is near Haymarket Metro station in Newcastle. It’s been a Newcastle institution for years. I visited regularly as a child (mostly, I think, because every time I went, my parents would buy me a small plastic dinosaur to [...]

Sometimes I am attracted to a book because of the cover. Sometimes I am attracted to a book because of the blurb on the back. Sometimes I am attracted to a book because I’ve read other stuff by the same author. In this specific case, I was attracted to this book because of the pun [...]

Back in “the day”, quite a long time ago now, I was a student. I used to do a lot of studenty things, which generally included staying up ridiculously late, then not actually getting out of bed until mid-afternoon. One of the other things I used to do was buy CDs. I still do buy [...]

I bought a DVD today. Ostensibly, it was “for the kids”. Well, it was two series — about twelve hours worth — of a series I think Youd remember. That, by the way, was a clue. The books were written by Samuel Youd between and were published between 1967 and 1968 as a trilogy, although [...]

It was one of our “family outing thingummies”. There’s currently an event on in NewcastleGateshead (the gestalt entity formed from Newcastle and Gateshead councils to promote events across the two) called EAT! Newcastle Gateshead, which is not, as it may initially sound, a command to consume the region, but is instead a festival of food. [...]

I went for a meal at Jesmond Dene House last week with the GLW. It’s not the sort of place we would normally go to. To be honest, with having small children, the restaurants we are more likely to go to are the ones with plastic seats where you get asked “do you want fries [...]

When I saw Why Do I Say These Things? by Jonathan Ross last week I was in two minds whether or not to buy it. I like Jonathan Ross; I might even go sufficiently far to describe myself as a fan. But, without wishing to sound mean to the chap, it’s his presenting skills and [...]

I knew I would like this book. It’s the same sort of thing as the book Risk, which I loved, and Freakonomics, which I loved. It’s not so much a book, as a toolbox. In that sense it is similar to Carl Sagan’s The Demon-haunted World: Science as a candle in the Dark. A toolbox [...]

I like Christopher Brookmyre. I’ve got all his books (or, given my reading capacity, at least those ones which have made it to the cheaper medium of paperback). Indeed I got the chance to speak to him at his book signing in Newcastle for his previous book, when he was engaged in writing A Snowball [...]