If people say they’re not sure about reading my new table-tennis themed novel doubles because they don’t like sport, I insist it’s actually about people, relationships and family secrets. Lots of unsporty people have enjoyed it, honest! Which is true, but the table-tennis is important too, because it’s a metaphor for the spins and deceptions going on beneath the surface. And also, I’d love to introduce more people to the game. I mean, what’s not to love about a sport which is simple to...

Traffic Tom Vanderbilt Allen Lane 2008

We all know that statistically speaking we’re far more likely to be killed driving to the airport than going down with the plane, but many of us still feel far more nervous as the aircraft takes off than we ever do on the road. The difference is that the driver feels in control, and since most drivers believe they’re above average, they don’t need to worry. (Their passengers may feel differently, but that would have to be their nerves, how could...

I was sorry to learn of the death of John Fenton on 27th December 2008. I boycotted his lectures as a theology undergraduate at Durham in the 1970s, and wrote snide asides in my copy of his commentaries, because he was far too liberal for my then evangelical mindset. I think he would have understood. He used to say that theology couldn’t be taught to anyone under thirty, and I was certainly a case in point.

He was in Oxford when I moved there some fifteen years later, though our paths...

My new novel doubles will not be available from bookshops or online bookstores until early Spring, but you can buy a copy NOW through my website - just go to the Books section.

Traffic Tom Vanderbilt Allen Lane 2008

[i]‘The road, more than simply a system of regulations and designs, is a place where many millions of us, with only loose parameters for how to behave, are thrown together daily in a kind of massive petri dish in which all kinds of uncharted, little-understood dynamics are at work. There is no other place where so many people from different walks of life – different ages, races, classes, religions, genders, political preferences, lifestyle...

A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder: How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place
by Eric Abrahamson and David H Freedman  Weidenfeld & Nicolson London 2006

Look at the front of women’s magazines or the TV schedules, and we quickly come across experts who’ll tell us how to declutter and bring order to our messy lives by buying boxes and gadgets, or paying them to teach us how to be neat. But what’s wrong with a bit of...