Life and letters

Now you can pick up Dava Sobel’s Galileo’s Daughter in paperback. An
elegant account of Galileo’s life and times, this book springs from Sobel’s
discovery of an Italian translation of the letters from his daughter Virginia.
Born out of wedlock, she spent her adult life in a poverty-stricken convent. She
wrote to her father, and he wrote back. But the ghost haunting the book is the
loss of the great scientist’s letters. Her father kept hers, the convent
disposed of his. Published by Fourth Estate, £7.99, ISBN 1857027124.