Richard McLauchlan

An elegant, revealing portrait of a remarkable family that helped to shape the politics, arts and sciences of modern Britain. The Times hailed Richard Burdon Haldane as 'one of the most powerful ... intellects' British statesmanship had ever seen. His brother John, a great physiologist, invented the first gas masks used in World War One. Their sister Elizabeth was among...

In the early second century CE, someone was described as playing a pipe 'with a bag tucked under his armpit.' That man, the first named piper in history, was the Roman Emperor Nero. Since then, this improbable conflation of bag and sticks has become one of the most beloved and contested instruments of all time. When another piping emperor, Tsar...