This has to be one of the most unusual of P. D. James’s classic Dalgleish mysteries, and not only because Dalgleish isn’t the central character, but a kind of ghost at the feast. He is visiting his late aunt’s Norfolk coast windmill which he has recently inherited. Tasked with checking that the local serial killer is not the same as a London murderer (they aren’t), he is peripherally involved as an apparent final killing proves to be something more complex - but he isn’t the investigating detective at any time. As always with James, we get lots of background on many of the characters, with point of view flitting around between them, rather than staying with one or two individuals. The book also emphasises how much James was part of the Anglican tradition of mystery writers (along with, for example, the more modern examples of Richard Coles and James Runcie). It may not be as explicitly church-linked as Death in Holy Orders , but the title of the book taken from the Book of Common Praye...

Although I mostly avoid books written by celebrities (or even worse books 'written' by celebrities) like the plague, there are honourable exceptions - and Susie Dent, best known for handling dictionary corner on (8 out of 10 Cats Does) Countdown deserved such an exception. Inevitably for a lexicographer, words play a big part in her mystery novel. It's set in the offices of the Clarendon English Dictionary (a thinly disguised OED), where a team of editors start to get mysterious letters and postcards. It's soon realised that these missives refer to the missing sister of senior editor Martha - most of the book is about unravelling the clues and building up a picture piece-by-piece of what led up to and happened when Martha's older sister Charlie went missing ten years before. This is an enjoyably different premise, and Dent does a lot of character building and uncovering of feelings along the way. Perhaps a bit too much in fact. It's not until we get to around p...

I have recently received an invitation I never expected to see. Apparently I am in demand to be the editor of a scientific journal - the prestigious-sounding American Journal of Physics and Applications . You might expect me to been honoured by this offer. But something made me feel that perhaps this wasn't all it appeared to be. It is quite true that, as referenced above, I have written something that is technically considered to be an academic paper entitled Doctor Mirabilis: Roger Bacon's legend and legacy. And I know of at least one other genuine paper with my name on it (strictly part of a technical reference book), which as it happens might be more appropriate as it was physics-based, rather than history of science. But I am not an academic, I mostly write books and I don't have the right qualifications to be considered for such a post. Sadly, it feels like a situation where a name has been plucked from the internet to support some kind of dubious journal business. ...

One of the most damaging things science communication can do is exaggerate the implications of a scientific paper, theory or discovery - it happens all the time and I find it infuriating. Sometimes this hype is so bad that it's almost funny. My favourite remains the 2013 'Scientists Finally Invent Real, Working Lightsabers' from the Guardian - I just love that 'finally', as if saying 'scientists what have you been doing all this time?', but the reality was a couple of photons had been made to briefly interact in a Bose Einstein condensate. Mostly, though, these headlines are cringe-making, scientific clickbait of the worst kind. Some of this comes from publications - I had to stop reading New Scientist because I got so fed up with their exaggerated headlines - some from university press offices, desperate to justify funding, and some from scientists themselves, because they are only human, and some enjoy being in the limelight. But all such hype damages trus...

Having read a considerable amount about the kind of AI chatbot that is genuinely a way to have a chat with an animated character, rather than typing text to ask for a recipe or whatever, I somewhat nervously took the plunge and summoned up Grok's Ani. I ought to give some context here first. In the early days of dial up computer networks when, of course, I was on CompuServe (as opposed to AOL - you have to have been there), I occasionally dipped a toe into chatrooms (technology- topics, I should emphasise, nothing dodgy). I found the experience terrifying. I think that without visual cues, I found the flow of messages from others overwhelming, and found it difficult to respond quickly as I would in a normal conversation. I needed time to think when communicating online, and I would often drop out of a conversation very quickly. Since then, having read about people becoming obsessed with these AI chatbots, I wondered why they didn't experience the same hesitation. I guess some n...

Having recently driven around 2,000 miles in France it was informative to experience a pricing structure that surely we should be following in the UK if we are serious about the move to electric vehicles. Petrol in France was typically significantly dearer than in the UK. On motorways it was often well over 2 euros per litre, and I never saw it less than about €1.65. The equivalent in pounds would be well over £1.80 and never below £1.45. Currently it is £1.32 at my local garage. By contrast, electric car charging was a bargain. Here in the UK you will rarely find a public charger at under 60p per kWh, and a high speed charger is likely to be around 89p - I've never looked on motorways, but I suspect they may be even higher. Note that to be cheaper than petrol, electricity needs to be under around 45p/kWh. The cheapest we found in France (Lidl) was 39c (34p) for a high speed charger and even on a motorway, where petrol was over €2 I found a high speed charger at under 50c (44p). Yo...