Speakers' Recommendations

• Ard Louis, who likes to read, recommends Iris : A memoir of Iris Murdoch  by John Bayley.   John Bayley, the Warton  Professor of English at the other place has written a frank and sometimes unbearingly moving memoir of his life with and marriage to  the great writer and philosopher, Dame Iris Murdoch.
• Sam Kutter, who plays his clarinet in various orchestras around town, recommends Brahms' Sonata in Eb major.
• Andrew Willetts,  who  has collected Beatles memorabelia for the past 18 years, recommends  Abbey Road as the best  Beatles album ever.
• Jon Doye likes books by Alan Paton; in particular Cry, the Beloved Country and Too Late the Phalarope.
• Raul Leote de Carvalho Recommends the opera Einstein on the Beach by Philip Glass.
• Evert-Jan Meijer recommends anything by the Flemish chansonier Jaques Brell
• Steven Spencer recommends that we read The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russel
• Phil Wilson Recommends the trilogy A Scots Quain by Lewis Grassic Gibbons. In particular he points out Gibbons' use of cadence in the English language to simulate Scottish dialects as a good example of "prose as poetry".
• Marc in 't Panhuis Recommends the Gullivers Travels by Jonathan Swift, especially for his parody of university life.
• Juan Anta Recommends we visit the Alhambra in Granada.
• Jean-Pierre Hansen  recommends we go to the  National Gallery   and visit the exhibition of 40 of the 60 portraits painted by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
• Felix Pahl Recommends the The Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas, and Western Political Theory and the Face of the Future,by Cambridge's own John Dunn.
• Dave Rowan, who is interested in neolithic monuments suggests we visit the Giants Ring near Belfast.
• Chris Skylaris, suggests we read books by the Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis, especially his travel books.
• Ard Louis, who still likes to read, recommends 3 books: 1) "Beyond Science: The Wider Human Context" by one of his favorite authors, John Polkinghorne, the former president of Queens College and a prof. of Theoretical Physics here. The book includes some fascinating vingnettes of his interactions with great physicists like Richard Feynman, Murray Gell-Mann and Paul Dirac, as well as Polkinghorne's thoughts on the theological implications of science. 2) "The Naturalist" the very charming autobiography of E.O. Wilson, the father of socio-biology and 3) "The Double Helix", where James Watson, in classic "kiss and tell" fashion, describes the exciting race here at Cambridge to unravel the structure of DNA. For an little human interest point, see what E.O. Wilson says about his former colleague James Watson in the chapter entitled "The Molecule Wars". ;-).