Journalism

by Andrew Robinson

A wide variety of book, exhibition and film reviews, plus feature articles including profiles and obituaries, published in UK and US newspapers, magazines and scholarly journals during the past two decades.

General Interest

1998: "'I've been in revolt all my life'", The Times, 4 February 1998

(Profile of Henri Cartier-Bresson)

1998: "Cutting edge of cinema", The Guardian, 7 September 1998

(Obituary of Akira Kurosawa)

2000: "Mayan treasures deep in the jungle", The Times, 19 August 2000

(Travel feature about Mayan art in Mexico)

2002: "'I had no idea that madness in the Islamic world had gone so far'", The Times, 7 August 2002

(Profile of V. S. Naipaul on his 70th birthday)

2004: "Henri Cartier-Bresson", The Guardian, 5 August 2004
(Obituary of Henri Cartier-Bresson)

2005: "Ray of light still shines in the dark", The Times, 18 August 2005
(Feature about Satyajit Ray on the 50th anniversary of his first film, Pather Panchali)

2007: "Einstein on and off the soapbox", New Scientist, 14 April 2007
(Review of Einstein on Politics by David Rowe and Robert Schulmann and Einstein: A Biography by Walter Isaacson)

2008: "Rocket man", The Financial Times, 5/6 January 2008
(Review of Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War by Michael J. Neufeld)

2010: "How to behave beyond the grave", Nature, 2 December 2010
(Review of a British Museum exhibition, Journey Through the Afterlife: Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead)​
 
2011: "High society", History Today, February 2011

(Review of a Wellcome Collection exhibition, High Society: Mind-Altering Drugs in History and Culture)

2011: "The captain and the castaway", The Independent, 17 June 2011
(Review of Crusoe: Daniel Defoe, Robert Knox and the Creation of Myth by Katherine Frank)

2014: "How do we know how to measure longitude?", (BBC) Focus, Summer 2014
(Feature about the history of measuring longitude on the 300th anniversary of the Longitude Prize)

2014: "The brewer's tale", Current World Archaeology, 68, 2014
(Review of The Brewer's Tale: A History of the World According to Beer by William Bostwick)

2015: "Ringing changes on vital information", Physics World, February 2015
(Review of Information Age: Six Networks That Changed the World, edited by Tilly Blyth)

2015: "The ascent of English", Nature, 12 March 2015
(Review of Scientific Babel: The Language of Science from the Fall of Latin to the Rise of English by Michael Gordin)
Listen to a Nature podcast about the review 

2015: "Restored Apu Trilogy returns Satyajit Ray's humane work to theaters", The New York Times,

10 May 2015 

(Feature about the US re-release of a restored version of the Apu Trilogy)

2015: "Reality change and check", The Lancet, 21 November 2015

(Review of a feature film, Steve Jobs)

2016: "Artist and empire", History Today, February 2016
(Review of a Tate Britain exhibition, Artist and Empire: Facing Britain's Imperial Past)

2016: "London shaken and stirred", BBC History Magazine, April 2016
(Feature about the London earthquakes of 1750)

2016: "Forgotten Utopia", New Scientist, 17 September 2016

(Cover feature about the ancient Indus civilisation and its lack of warfare)

2016: "Asylums and after", Science, 14 October 2016

(Review of a Wellcome Collection exhibition, Bedlam: The Asylum and Beyond)

2016: "Four shakes a second", The Daily Telegraph, 15 October 2016

(Review of Furry Logic: The Physics of Animal Life by Matin Durrani and Liz Kalaugher)

2017: "All around Turing", New Scientist, 7 January 2017

(Review of The Turing Guide by Jack Copeland, Jonathan Bowen, Mark Sprevak and Robin Wilson)

2017: "He wrote the future", Nature, 19 January 2017

(Feature about Arthur C. Clarke on his birth centenary)

2017: "The cradle of humanity", Current World Archaeology, 81, 2017

(Review of The Cradle of Humanity: How the Changing Landscape of Africa Made Us So Smart by Mark Maslin)

2017: "Hipposandals, plague pits and chamberpots", The Lancet, 8 April 2017

(Review of a Museum of London exhibition, Tunnel: The Archaeology of Crossrail)

2017: "Prophet of the space age", The Daily Telegraph, 9 December 2017

(Review of Arthur C. Clarke: Odyssey of a Visionary by Neil McAleer)

2018: "Thus spake Albert", Aeon, 12 March 2018

(Feature about why we love to quote--and misquote--Albert Einstein)

2018: "Tom Lehrer at 90", Nature, 5 April 2018

(Feature about mathematician and satirist Tom Lehrer)

2018: "Einstein goes east", Science, 18 May 2018

(Review of The Travel Diaries of Albert Einstein: The Far East, Palestine, and Spain, 1922-1923, edited by Ze'ev Rosenkranz)

2018: "Revisiting the culture wars", Nature, 5 July 2018

(Review of A Future in Ruins: Unesco, World Heritage, and the Dream of Peace, by Lynn Meskell)

2018: "A physicist's final reflections", Science, 16 November 2018

(Review of Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking)

2019: "The experiment that made Einstein famous", The Wall Street Journal, 16 February 2019

(Feature about the solar eclipse of 1919 and its confirmation of general relativity)

Science and the History of Science

2005: "A polymath's dilemma", Nature, 17 November 2005

(Feature about Thomas Young, and polymathy in science)

2014: "How do we know the structure of the periodic table?", (BBC) Focus, March 2014
(Feature about the history of the periodic table of the chemical elements)

2014: "Good scientists and honest people", Physics World, June 2014
(Review of Nuclear Dawn: F. E. Simon and the Race for Atomic Weapons in World War II by Kenneth D. McRae)
​

2016: "In search of Ramanujan", Nature, 31 March 2016
(Review of a feature film, The Man Who Knew Infinity)
 

2016: "The Marconi connection", New Scientist, 13 August 2016
(Review of Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World by Marc Raboy)

2016: "Use a toad to catch a quake", New Scientist, 3 December 2016

(Feature about Zhang Heng, inventor of the world's first seismoscope)

2017: "The mathematics of life, death, and beauty", The Lancet, 18 February 2017

(Review of the Mathematics gallery at the Science Museum and its catalogue by David Rooney)

2017: "Einstein's magnum opus", Science, 25 August 2017
(Review of The Formative Years of Relativity by Hanoch Gutfreund and Jurgen Renn)

 ​

2017: "Scientist, theologian, and heretic", The Lancet, 7 October 2017

(Review of Priest of Nature: The Religious Worlds of Isaac Newton by Rob Iliffe)

2018: "Circle of influence", Physics World, April 2018

(Review of Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science by Karl Sigmund)

Archaeology and Scripts

2002: "Cracking the Linear B code", BBC History Magazine, July 2002

(Feature about Michael Ventris)

2006: "Visible marks of the move from sound to stone", The Times Higher Education Supplement, 24 February 2006
(Review of The First Writing: Script Invention as History and Process edited by Stephen Houston and Ideogram by J. Marshall Unger)

2009: "Decoding antiquity: eight scripts that still can’t be read", New Scientist, 30 May 2009
(Cover feature based on Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World’s Undeciphered Scripts by AR)

2017: "Little more than tea and cricket", History Today, April 2017

(Review of Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India by Shashi Tharoor)

+ "Introduction" to My Adventures with Satyajit Ray: The Making of Shatranj Ke Khilari (The Chess Players) by Suresh Jindal (HarperCollins India, 2017)