Surprisingly good. Conway’s dementia was disturbingly effectively conveyed and no terrible liberties were taken with mathematics to my great comfort. Wondering whether his wife could truly have been such a saint, I did some research and discovered that indeed she had not. That little bit of Hollywood rose-colored-glassification was unfortunate, but by no means did it ruin the film.

Witty, whimsical and winning. A feel-good movie if there ever was one, but with enough charm to leave you feeling good about feeling good. Nicely done.

A close relative of A Prayer for Owen Meany and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and every bit as charming, funny and heartbreaking as those two excellent novels. Our protagonist in this case is an autistic boy with a love of science and reason — a man after my own heart.

A gripping history of algebra from cuneiform accounting through to “motivic cohomology” and other polysyllabic turns of phrase that make words like polynomial seem downright plain. Derbyshire skimps neither on narrative nor mathematics and maintains a nicely readable balance from the dawn of civilization straight through to the 20th century. It helps that math has been peopled with some peculiar characters across the centuries.