Grand old man

In the spirit of Dava Sobel’s Longitude, Clark Blaise takes an
unsung scientific hero of the past and charts his triumph against adversity. Sir
Sandford Fleming was the man who—against the better judgement of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science—persuaded us to abandon
local times and link up to a global system of time zones. A civil engineer and
scientist, he built the railway linking Atlantic to Pacific across Canada. He
also designed Canada’s first postage stamp. Time Lord is published by
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, £14.99, ISBN 029784136X.