History of the world's tallest buildings <nowiki>*</nowiki> – Also set record at time of completion as tallest building ever built. The height of Lincoln Cathedral is disputed by some, but accepted by most sources. The completion date for the spire is given as 1311 rather than 1300 by some sources. Also the height of the spire of Old St Paul's Cathedral, destroyed by lightning in 1561, is disputed, for example Christopher Wren (1632–1723) judged that an overestimate and gave a height of . The spire of Mole Antonelliana in Turin, completed in 1889, is claimed to have been tall; however, the upper part of the structure
The World Is What It Is The World Is What It Is The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul is a biography of the Nobel Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul by Patrick French. It was published in 2008 (by Picador in the UK and Knopf in the USA). The title is a quotation from Naipaul's book "A Bend in the River". "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." French deals with Naipaul's family background and his life from his birth in 1932 until his second marriage