Bill Harvey: The tablet will blow up again

As I write this, Wales and England are through to the knockout rounds, while Scotland have work to do. Don’t turn the page yet if you are football-phobic. There has been plenty of alternative entertainment on offer this week for eye care professionals.

Firstly, the student versus professors Radio 4 quiz, The Second Degree, came from Anglia Ruskin University this week. It is well worth catching on the BBC Sounds app (or visit bbc.in/3j2kCrK), mainly to hear the always excellent Dr Kez Latham and one of her students battle it out over some optometry questions.

Also worth a listen, again on the Sounds app, is the biography of Claude Monet called Mad Enchantment, written by Ross King. The programme focuses on the artist’s later years and the battle he had with his failing eyesight. In a case study (page 33), Dr Michael Crossland mentions the close links between sight loss and some famous artists, and the subject has always fascinated. With Monet, the problem was cataract, but theories abound about others; El Greco and astigmatism, van Gogh and photosensitive epileptic colour shifts, da Vinci and intermittent exotropia, to name but a few. The broadcast is also a good one for ‘spot the error,’ especially when it implies Monet developed a ‘secondary cataract’ when aphakic.