Submerged under seven feet of water at high tide the rock had hitherto been thought impossible to

Submerged under seven feet of water at high tide, the rock had hitherto been thought impossible to build on. But taming the elements is only half the story and, as this is the history of a business empire, the description of Robert the cut-throat businessman is equally impressive. Though he was chief engineer to the Northern Lighthouse Board, the Bell Rock commission went to his friendly rival James Rennie. Robert was not going to let such a detail stop him building the tower, and within three years he had usurped Rennie's position by blithely ignoring his master's instructions He gave the lighthouse commissioners no choice.

After asking and being refused, he simply took what he wanted. As Bathurst puts it, "The fact that he was to be proved right makes him admirable; it does not always make him likeable".Another suspect quality, though one without which this book could not have been written, was Robert's penchant for nepotism. He encouraged it at all levels and made his son Alan clerk of the works when he had already promised the post to one of his long-standing assistants. The beneficiaries of this nepotism all seem to have deserved their good fortune, but one suspects that even family history is written by the victors.

The aim of this kind of book, however, is not to cast doubt but to laud an inspiring achievement. This is eminently justifiable in the case of the Stevensons - who clearly deserve such a deftly written and enjoyable record as this.. To celebrate World Book Day, which takes place on Shakespeare's birthday, 23 April, we offered a year of reading - a book per month - to the first 10 readers to write in with the name of the Russian writer who was also born on that day The answer was Vladimir Nabokov. The winners are: G Handy, Bishops Stortford; G Taylor, St Albans; L Smith, Worcester; A Strachan, Manchester; T Caulfield, Whitley Bay; D Spooner, Twickenham; M Brown, London N8; C Parke, Bangor, Co Down; B Whelan, Stourbridge; R Jenkins, Aberystwyth. Thanks to everyone else who wrote in..

Born in Windsor, Eton- educated, Hugo Williams is the son of an actor. The rueful-shrug aesthetic of his elegantly casual poem belongs with a fiercely-held conviction that poetry should be egalitarian, demotic and natural: he is brilliant at the music of ordinary speech. His work is poignant, understated, witty; deeply against any attitude-striking or elitist allusions. A big theme is the double- edgedness of form: our need for it, the hollowness of it. (One poem about making love has the poet wondering, the moment sex is over, where the line-breaks will go in the poem he'll write about this.) More deeply, the theme is never entirely understanding what happens to you as you grow up, grow old, remember childhood; find love, lose it, worry about it.