Was a little sceptical at first but now completely won over by the Roomba. We live in a 3 storey house and the Dyson hasn't come out of the cupboard once since this purchase - you can sit for hours watching it work its way through the room. Practically speaking you do need to prepare the room as with any vacuum cleaner, i.e. remove smaller items from the floor, get cables out of harms way. The Roomba is quite powerful working from surface to surface, can easily scale a couple of centimeters, a little like a minature dune buggy which very occasionally gets it into trouble but have been pleasantly surprised about how seldomly it gets stuck - it is great to return home after leaving it to run around and coming home to find it retired safely to the docking station. The cleaning quality is really impressive - carpets look almost like new when done, much improved on a regular cleaner - maybe that was just my laziness with the Dyson but that's kind of the point with this! Only concern would be around the technical support. The warranty documentation that comes with the product is provided by a company that is no longer trading and apparently the unit needs to be returned to Sweden for repair if it does break down - very much hoping that never happens.

This book certainly achieves what it says on the cover (or at least in the introduction), i.e. to tell a cracking good story. While a historical account, the pace is closer to a medieval Sansom novel and the book is difficult to put down. Can only hope that more historians write in this style, it can only encourage more to become passionate about the history of this country and understand better how emotions and events repeat themselves over many centuries.

Sadly have to agree with many of the other reviews here. Having read previous Douglas Kennedy novels and thoroughly enjoyed them this was a real let down. What seemed at first to be a great twist in the novel quickly degenerated - the ending of the book could have been greatly enhanced by a return to reality rather than pursuing the thread to a farcical ending. The frequent self congratulatory literary and musical references also irritate - in my experience people don't quote writers at each other or play guessing games about pieces of classical music constantly during everyday conversation