One of the best

It would be easy to say that Peter Medawar’s The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice (reisssued by Oxford University Press, £7.99, ISBN 0 19 286193 X) needs no recommendation. In fact, Medawar on science needs recommending again and again, in case a generation is brought up knowing nothing about him or the sheer grace and intellectual grip of his writing. This book of essays shows him at this best. The stunning thing is that he always was.