As reader in history of science at the Royal Institution, Frank James is preoccupied with writing the conservation plan for its grand mix of 18th, 19th and 20th-century buildings. This is guiding some of his reading.
He鈥檚 just finishing Jane Ridley鈥檚 life of her great grandfather, the architect Edwin Lutyens, in Edwin Lutyens: His life, his wife, his work (Pimlico). He reckons it鈥檚 an excellent insight into Edwardian and inter-war architecture and Lutyens鈥檚 use of geometrical ratios to design his buildings, which range from the Cenotaph in London to Viceroy House in Delhi. And the Social Science Association is the subject of a 鈥渟uper book鈥� by Lawrence Goldman: Science, Reform, and Politics in Victorian Britain (Cambridge, 2002).
On a more sombre note, Mark Roseman鈥檚 The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting: Wannsee and the final solution (Penguin) deals with the 1942 meeting of the mid-level leadership of the Third Reich, called to speed up the process of the Holocaust: 鈥淚t reminds us that industrialisation, bureaucratic processes, and control of information can be put to evil purposes if the tools of control fall into the wrong hands.鈥�
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