Sir Nick Young's memoir is a fascinating and candid account of his thirteen years as chief executive of the British Red Cross (2001-2014). During this critical period he led the organisation's response to the financial crisis, the Iraq War, the Asian Tsunami, the London bombings, a kidnapping, the fighting in Syria, media challenges, and numerous earthquakes, floods and other disasters. The author shares the strains and moments of fulfilment, relief and humour, as he played a key role in the response to some of the 21st Century's most dramatic and dangerous events. His book paints a vivid yet modest picture of what is involved running one of the world's best-known disaster response organisations, reacting to catastrophes, both man-made and natural, and saving the lives and livelihoods of those caught up in global disasters, conflicts and health emergences. It is rare for charity leaders to reveal their insights in this way and, at the same time, paint such a vivid picture of life at the top of a large voluntary organisation. The result is a compelling read, particularly for those interested in international affairs, the way charities work, and what makes them different from other types of world class organisations.

Very few British soldiers could lay claim to such a full war as Leslie Young. Having survived the retreat to and evacuation from Dunkirk, he volunteered for the newly formed Commandos and took part in their first operation, the raid on the Lofoten Islands. He fought and was captured in Tunisia. He went on the run before his POW camp at Fontanellato was taken over by the Nazis after the September 1943 Italian armistice. He spent six months on the run in the Apennine mountains aided by brave and selfless Italians. Many of whom were actively fighting their occupiers. He eventually reached Allied lines but not before several of his companions were tragically killed by both German and American fire.

On return to England he immediately signed up for the invasion of North West Europe and despite being wounded eventually fought through to Germany.

It is thanks to his son’s research that Major Young’s story can now be told. It is an inspiring and thrilling account which demands to be read.

The focus of this book is the continuing strength of pure mathematics in Russia after the post-Soviet diaspora. The authors are eight young specialists who are associated with strong research groups in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the fields of algebraic geometry and number theory. Their articles are based on lecture courses given at British universities. The articles are mainly surveys of the recent work of the research groups and contain a substantial number of original results. Topics covered are embeddings and projective duals of homogeneous spaces, formal groups, mirror duality, del Pezzo fibrations, Diophantine approximation and geometric quantization. The authors are I. Arzhantsev, M. Bondarko, V. Golyshev, M. Grinenko, N. Moshchevitin, E. Tevelev, D. Timashev and N. Tyurin. Mathematical researchers and graduate students in algebraic geometry and number theory worldwide will find this book of great interest.