Joseph Rotblat

Joseph Rotblat has died. I heard him on Desert Island Discs a few years ago. A Polish Jew, he managed to get a position lecturing in Liverpool University in 1939; his wife remained in Poland until she could join him. She never succeeded; after his last visit back home he caught what turned out to be the last train across Europe before the Nazis invaded Poland, and never saw her again.

After being briefly interned, he joined the Manhattan Project because he saw nuclear weapons as something we had to reach before the Nazis did, but when Germany surrendered he dropped out of the programme and spent the rest of his life campaigning against nuclear weaponry.

An inspirational man, I see the good he did throughout his life as combatting the insanity purveyed by the late Edward Teller.

Review: Daniel Deronda

I recently read Daniel Deronda, by George Eliot, after learning that it was what inspired Arthur Balfour to issue the Balfour Declaration. rysmiel asked for my reaction to it, so I thought I'd post the results here, in case anyone else was interested.

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Who holds a higher place in your esteem, Richard Attenborough or David Attenborough?