Martin Mobberley’s biography of Sir Patrick Moore is saddled with perhaps the most ungainly title ever for such a work, and the first impression that the title conveys is only amplified by the subtitle: ‘A Fan’s Biography of Sir Patrick Moore.’ In the face of such, a reader could be forgiven for expecting a hagiography heavy on anecdote and light on research, and that is certainly what I was prepared for. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Mobberley has produced a well-researched, very thorough (640 pages) and, frankly, surprisingly honest examination of the life of the man who from the late 1950s onwards was synonymous with astronomy in the public eye.

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