I thought of Ada Lovelace, Byron's daughter, who came up with the first coherent ideas about computer programming. Then of Charles Babbage and his Analytical Engine that had so inspired Lovelace Did he wear pullovers? Perhaps not. I thought of Alan Turing, and wondered about gay men in pullovers, and how they would fit in to the awkward stereotype presented here. "Almost always, they were boys, or rather men: for historical reasons, but also because there is perhaps an affinity between the narrow-focused, wordless concentration required for engineering and a particular kind of male mind."Still, as I read through the text, I couldn't help thinking of the inventors of the computers on which much of the work described here takes place, and wondering if this definition of the British boffin was rather too narrowly defined. On the flap, it says that this is "a vivid love-letter to quiet men in pullovers". In the preface, this stereotype - of the unassuming engineer or hobbyist working away anonymously in rainy old Blighty, perhaps in a shed with his wife bringing him a cup of tea, or in a broom-cupboard-style public lab somewhere - is just as narrowly defined.

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The Fibonacci sequence, much more than the mathematical "curiosity'' Spufford describes, always begins 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55. You do not just start it with "any old numbers" and of the infinite amount of numbers it contains, only 6 have only one digit.The intellectual intentions of this book often seem just as incoherent. He further claims that the Fibonacci sequence only contains one-digit numbers (which are obtained by lopping off all but the last digit of any number in it) But that's rubbish. Hoorah for the Brits!When Spufford gets going, he can be a great story-teller But some of his science could do with brushing up.

A description of the Fibonacci sequence presented here is completely wrong. According to Spufford, "In its most generic form, it works like this. You take any old pair of numbers and add them together to produce a third number. Then you add the second and third together to produce a fourth, the third and fourth together to produce a fifth and so on ad infinitum." He suggests starting with 2 and 7. Of course, you can't sell something that someone else is giving away for free.