Bill Eckberg writes:

After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, inwhich King James II of England was overthrownby a union of Parliamentarians led byWilliam of Orange, the English governmentfound itself in dire financial straits. It hadjoined the War of the Grand Alliance againstFrance in 1689, and was struggling to fund itsarmy in a conflict that was to last for another8 years. To make matters worse, the countrywas suffering from a lack of good coinage.

As Thomas Levenson explains in his engagingbook Newton and the Counterfeiter, thegovernment turned to an unlikely heroto save the nation from financial calamity� Isaac Newton.

An unlikely appointee for therole, he was at that time enjoying fame as theauthor of Principia Mathematica, his seminalwork on the foundations of physics, and hadjust embarked on a radical change of career asa politician.

Although the job had been treated as asinecure by most of his predecessors, Newtontook it on with vigour. He masterfully oversawthe great re-coinage and, after overcominghis initial revulsion, prosecuted with relish theclippers and �coiners', or counterfeiters, whowere partly responsible for the disarray of thecountry's currency. It wasn't long before hisrole brought him up against the arch-counterfeiterand forger, William Chaloner, whoseskill and success in faking French pistoles(gold coins) and English guineas had quicklytaken him from poverty to riches.

The book documents the entertainingrelationship between these two geniuses andthe different worlds they inhabited. Althoughtheir story is well known to historians of science,Levenson's account adds substantiallyto our knowledge of the social and politicalbackground against which it played out. Theauthor manages to unpick many of the tangledand morally ambiguous webs that madeup the metropolitan counterfeiting cultureof that era, and shows � impressively, giventhe scant sources available � how Chalonerpulled off many of his brazen schemes.

It is an enthralling tale.