Last refreshed at 0600GMT Friday The best five books on everything | 30 July 2010

A Mathematician’s Apology

G H Hardy
Image of A Mathematician's Apology (Canto)
When I read it as a kid, this book revealed to me how much mathematics is a creative art as much as a useful science. I was still hankering after something that made a lot of logical sense and wasn’t too ambiguous but was creative. It really brought mathematics alive for me.