Miranda Seymour

Confronted by this lavishly endorsed book — ‘compelling’ (David Lodge), ‘gripping’(John le Carré),‘thrilling’ (Jonathan Freedland) — I felt depressed. Two weeks ago, the New York Times’s savvy London correspondent accused the British of being obsessed with the Nazis. This might appear a case of pots and kettles: not for nothing did America’s widely watched History Channel become known as the Hitler Channel. Nevertheless, Sarah Lyall had made a valid point. A stupefying 830 books on the Third Reich were published in the UK in 2010 and — although no figures are yet available for 2013 — a reduction any time soon seems unlikely. Germany’s history of genocide is unforgivable.

One of the best permanent shows in London is the Science Museum's collection of electrical and magnetic instruments commissioned by George III. Here, gathered in one room, you can see orreries, Leyden jars, air pumps and - my favourite - electrostatic spangles flickering like lightning in the glass pillars of a temple intended to stand as the centrepiece of a dining-table. You could, until 1993, combine the joys of this collection with a visit to the museum's history of electricity, laid out in darkened tableaux to make theatre of the lacemaker's pin-pricked candleshade, the shock of the first arc-light. I mourn its passing; these are the places which bring us into imaginative connection with the extraordinary world of the Lunar men.

EDITH WHARTON'S FRENCH RIVIERAby Philippe Collas and Eric VilledaryFlammarion, £22.50, pp. 149, ISBN 2080107224 London, even in normal years, is rained on for 150 days to Nice's 60; it receives a paltry 1,500 hours of sunlight in comparison to Nice's enviable 2,700.