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• JOHN MATTHEWS DL

  The author is a distinguished scientist with an engineering base, who has made his mark in analysing landslides both in this country and throughout the developing world. In addition he constructed a model forecasting the rate of climate change which has proved remarkably accurate so far in its projections. However, if you mention the name of Bruce Denness in his native Isle of Wight, you normally get the rejoinder "Is'nt he the chap who writes letters to the Daily Telegraph?"
  
  
  
  The book is a collection of those letters mainly to the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, but sometimes to scientific journals as well, between the years 2004 to 2020, together with a comment on each letter expressed in an inimitable quirky style which some will find endearing and others irritating. The contents of the letters vary widely. Some are eccentric, displaying a love-hate ( more hate) relationship with his socks, the habits of a much-loved cat, the behaviour of tits nibbling at rusty metal garden furniture, the annual return of a family of Canada geese to a former home and the effects of rape-oil on his wife's bees. Some are tendentious, giving views on modern education and the National Health Service. Others are desperately serious, concentrating on the world threat of climate change and rise in sea levels.
  
  
  
  Denness has never lost his rural upbringing as the son of a small farmer in the Island. Nor has he forgotten the trauma of being a polio victim at the age of 8. Yet he writes throughout with an amused tolerance which most readers will find very engaging.

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