STEPHEN HAWKING A MEMOIR OF FRIENDSHIP AND PHYSICS

LEONARD MLODINOW Allen Lane, 240pp, £20, ebook £9.99

The author of this book about Stephen Hawking is in an ‘almost unique position’, wrote Jim Al-khalili in the Guardian. ‘A fellow physicist and science writer, [Leonard Mlodinow] worked closely with Hawking over many years during which they co-wrote two bestselling books: A Briefer History of Time and The Grand Design, the collaboration on and writing of which forms the backdrop for this memoir.’ Mlodinow’s account is ‘full of genuine affection [and] doesn’t shy away from Hawking’s intense focus, selfcentredness, unpredictability and the difficulties faced by his wives and carers’.

Steven Poole in the Telegraph thought the book was ‘tremendously entertaining in its anatomy of the nitty-gritty of co-authorship, and the frustrations that often drove Mlodinow, after a particularly unproductive evening at Hawking’s house, to seek out a few pints at a Cambridge pub that did after-hours lock-ins’.

Despite it being a ‘compelling read’, however, James Mcconnachie in the Sunday Times had reservations: ‘For all the anecdotes and conversations, and all the excellent biographical and scientific summaries, Hawking the man feels elusive. Mlodinow clearly knew and liked him, but I finished the book unsure of whether or not I did.’ A statement with which Tom Whipple in the Times agreed: ‘At the end we are left with as good a picture as we are likely to get of a man who was surely the most improbable global celebrity of the early 21st century. Yet I’m not sure how much closer we really are to knowing what was going on behind that twitching cheek and lopsided smile.’