So here, as ever, are my ten best reads of 2025, in no particular order as the say on the game shows, with my top pick at the ...

My annual round-up of the books I read in 2025 was pre-empted by a request from Research Professional News (RPN) to write 250 ...

Collections from previous years are available for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Well, not really night anymore, as I first opened this page at 4 AM. Out the window brittle stars burn, though the faintest ...

Mick Herron Down Cemetery Road Enthused as I was by this author’s Slough House sequence of novels (reviewed last month) I turned to one of his novels featuring sleuth Zoë Boehm. In this story, bored ...

In 2025, as the century closed its first quarter (where has the time gone?) I read (and listened to) 70-ish books, though the precise number rather depends on how one counts things. Mick Herron’s nine ...

Pants of Cromer’, Mr Ginsberg died in the early hours of New Year’s Day. He was 17. Discovered as a stray in the garden at ...

Just before Christmas I was asked to talk to our molecular biologists about multivariate analyses. I was reminded of this on Thursday afternoon, when I saw that I had to talk to them on Friday. “Ah, ...

The anticipation of Christmas under commercial pressure has also made it harder to sustain the appropriate sense of alert watchfulness. We as a staff team at St Mary’s Hornsey Rise try to sustain our ...

I am sick of impact factors and so is science. The impact factor might have started out as a good idea, but its time has come and gone. Conceived by Eugene Garfield in the 1970s as a useful tool for ...

This year I read 64 books, the first time since records began (2014) that the number has exceeded my age in years (I am 62). The total might be inflated, though, as some of the books have been ...

Update (17:00 03 Mar): all members of the UK or international scientific community were invited to indicate their support by signing the letter. The opportunity to do so closed at 17:00 UK time on 03 ...