A few weeks ago the publisher of one of my two books due to appear early this year, Thomas Telford, asked me to choose between two preliminary cover designs. One of them was a photograph of a cross-section through a Nautilus shell. I did not even consider the alternative because Simon May’s book of aphorisms, which was published late last year by Metro, has exactly the same image on the cover, except that mine will be blue and his is orange. The completed design arrived in this morning’s post, and it looks pretty good. It will be a real pleasure to show my book to Simon the next time we meet. Of course, his is an introduction to philosophy, while mine is only about international construction, but the cover will help level the old playing field.