I found this book sufficiently entertaining and interesting on a second dip that I removed it from my "out" pile. It recounts Hoyle's early life and education, beginning in the poor villages of the Yorkshire dales during the Great War and its aftermath, where he endeavoured to avoid school for as long as possible while teaching himself arithmetic, reading, chemistry, and much else. By a combination of intelligence, wit, and luck, he made it through the scholarship system to the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge. There is some opinionated but sharp comment on the First and Second World Wars, and observations on matters, from the idiocies of legal and other bureaucracies to the clothing and (lack of) heating of the period. His scientific interests are mentioned, but not in such detail as to bore or repel the non-physicist, and there are amusing anecdotes which offer a glimpse into the Cambridge academic scene in the science faculties of the 1930s. MB 5-ii-2009 ( )