Marcus du Sautoy’s new guide is excellent on maths, much less so at the arts

Blueprints
Marcus du Sautoy (Fourth Estate (UK, out now); Basic Books (US, 16 September))

Marcus Du Sautoy  needs us to peer arithmetic and artwork as inextricably hooked up. “Both are creating ways to interpret, understand, and navigate our place in the universe,” he starts his new guide, Blueprints: How arithmetic shapes creativity.

I’m now not certain who nonetheless doubts this, just about a century after Albert Einstein and his violin; this guide feels a bit redundant in a time of considerable high-profile collaborations between du Sautoy’s “two cultures” of feelings and…