The Wisdom of Crowds
Since the beginning of the “age of the common man” in the nineteenth century, there has been a widely held belief that, as Henry Thoreau put it, ‘The mass never comes up to…
Non-Fiction
Why SOE gave away Britain’s top war secret to the Nazis
At a crucial stage of World War II, the Special Operations Executive deliberately allowed one of its most closely guarded top secrets to fall into Nazi hands – as part of a…
How to tell bad companies
Some years back, I published a book titled Bad Company: Behind the corporate mask, which the Sunday Times was generous enough to nominate as its Business Book of the Week. The…
Afghanistan – 4, Britain – 0
When British troops invaded Afghanistan in 2001 together with the U.S., it wasn’t the first time, or even the second or third. It was Britain’s fourth Afghan war and one which…
Explaining coincidences (away)
There’s nothing the Provisional Wing of parapsychology enjoys more than debunking so-called anomalous events by citing the gullibility and scientific illiteracy of we…
Britain muddles through – on propaganda
Ministry of Muddle One of the British government’s first acts of war in 1939 was to form the Ministry of Information to combat Goebbels’s Ministry of Propaganda and…
The telegram that lost Germany the war
In early 1917, the First World War had reached a crisis. Both sides were exhausted. Millions of men had been killed without any decisive results. The efforts of the Allies to…
Just another coincidence
When we moved into our new (Victorian) house we quickly noticed that the entrance gate wasn’t working properly. Like many such gates, the bottom hinge had come loose out of the…
The mystery of the green stones
Isn’t it amazing what you can find just lying around? A friend told me about a field near my village where he had found strange looking green stones. I searched where he told me…
Can science be “alternative”?
Some years ago I published a book titled Forbidden Science (Alternative Science in the US) and came in for considerable criticism over my choice of title. People glared sternly at…