Next week Dooms­day Men is released in the Unit­ed States, but it is still being reviewed here in the UK, six months after it was pub­lished. I’ve just seen a review which appeared in the Church Times on 23 Novem­ber by the Revd Dr Gavin Ashen­den, who is a chap­lain and lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sus­sex.  I’m glad to say he enjoyed the book! Unfor­tu­nate­ly the review is not avail­able online (unless you are a sub­scriber) but here are some excerpts:

“Nuclear weapons, alche­my, aspi­ra­tions of the sci­en­tif­ic eth­i­cal good becom­ing ‘night­mares’ of total destruc­tion, sci­en­tif­ic prophe­cies — this is the sto­ry of the nuclear bomb. The nar­ra­tive is grip­ping and moral­ly astute. […] The sci­ence is told with a Bill Bryson­ish kind of panache. But, at times, it becomes a cross between Bryson and Umber­to Eco. There is a sub-nar­ra­tive of eso­teric knowl­edge and mys­te­ri­ous, aston­ish­ing­ly accu­rate pre­dic­tions from HG Wells. Learned, acces­si­ble, and draw­ing occa­sion­al­ly on the styl­is­tic skills of the nov­el­ist, this makes for a very good read.”

Ashen­den clear­ly enjoyed the anec­dotes about Leo Szi­lard, one of the found­ing fathers of the atom­ic age and a cen­tral fig­ure in the book:

“The nar­ra­tive con­tains won­der­ful details. Leo Szi­lard spent his morn­ings ‘think­ing’ in the pub­lic bath of the Strand Palace Hotel. At noon he would be eject­ed by the maid. There, he con­ceived of the rela­tion­ship between ura­ni­um and the req­ui­site nuclear chain reac­tion. When he took his dis­cov­ery to Ernest Ruther­ford in 1934, he was thrown out of his office. Szi­lard was enor­mous­ly grate­ful ret­ro­spec­tive­ly. Had his dis­cov­ery entered the pub­lic sci­en­tif­ic domain ear­li­er than it did, Hitler would have got his hands on the bomb some time before 1945.”

The Strand Palace Hotel is in fact just across the road from the offices of my UK pub­lish­er, Pen­guin. Now there’s a coin­ci­dence for you!