Having just got an extremely good price for my old K3 on eBay, I've decided to use some of the money buying the complete 11-volume "Strangers and Brothers" series of novels by the English author C.P. Snow (1905-1980).
Snow was a fascinating character; a physicist, academic, and civil servant, who lamented the fact that the general public didn't understand what scientists actually did. His "Strangers and Brothers" series chronicles the life of Lewis Eliot, from humble beginnings in an English provincial town, to reasonably successful London lawyer, to Cambridge don, to wartime service in Whitehall, to senior civil servant and finally retirement. Along the way he examines such issues as the scientific community's involvement in (and reaction to) the development and deployment of nuclear weapons during the Second World War.
A truly fascinating series of books, which I've read a couple of in the past; I look forward to reading the entire series on my Kindle.
I don't know if the expression is used elsewhere, but the expression "The Corridors of Power", which is used as a synonym for Whitehall, where senior civil servants are the real "power behind the throne" in the British political system, comes from the title ("Corridors of Power") of one of the books in this series.
In case anyone is interested, the 11 books are (in chronological order, not publication order):
- Time of Hope (1949)
- George Passant (first called Strangers and Brothers) (1940)
- The Conscience of the Rich (1958)
- The Light and the Dark (1947)
- The Masters (1951)
- The New Men (1954)
- Homecomings (1956)
- The Affair (1960)
- Corridors of Power (1964)
- The Sleep of Reason (1968)
- Last Things (1970)