The Age of Genius: The Seventeenth Century and the Birth of the Modern Mind...
AC Grayling’s claims for the impact of the Enlightenment are overstatedOnce upon a time, not so long ago, people believed in a wondrous time called the Enlightenment, a particularly triumphant period...
View ArticleHalf-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life by Edward O Wilson – review
A chilling warning that we’re in danger of wiping out all wildlife on EarthIn 2000, workers finished construction of a hydropower plant in Tanzania’s Udzungwa mountains. A giant reservoir was created...
View ArticleSix Facets of Light by Ann Wroe review – a mesmerising hybrid of biography,...
Eric Ravilious, Samuel Palmer and William Blake all feature in this personal meditation on the mystery of light, set mainly on England’s South DownsAnn Wroe has long been a unique voice in nonfiction,...
View ArticleThe Most Perfect Thing: Inside (and Outside) a Bird’s Egg by Tim Birkhead –...
The eccentric lives of or egg collectors have inspired an exquisite bookTim Birkhead features prominently in the acknowledgments pages of one of the most brilliantly eccentric books of recent years,...
View ArticleTop 10 books on illness
From Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar to Oliver Sacks’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, doctor and author Gavin Francis chooses the best writing about sicknessMany would start with Hippocrates, but...
View ArticleIt’s All in Your Head by Suzanne O’Sullivan review – psychosomatic disorders...
This remarkable study uses case histories to show the extent and gravity of a much misunderstood conditionThis remarkable book by neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan, shortlisted for the 2016 Wellcome...
View ArticleBetween the Sunset and the Sea by Simon Ingram review – a love affair with...
A riveting, beguiling and highly personal history of Britain’s most evocative peaksThere are four magnificent mountains in Torridon, in the north-west Highlands, but one of them is invisible – or might...
View ArticleHearing voices with Charles Fernyhough and Francesca Kay – books podcast
We tune in to the voices inside our heads with the psychologist Charles Fernyhough and the novelist Francesca KayWe’re exploring inner space this weekend in a podcast that asks: what does it sound like...
View ArticleLab Girl: A Story of Trees, Science and Love by Hope Jahren – review
Hope Jahren’s remarkable memoir is both personal odyssey and the story of her profound affinity with the natural worldLeaves, soil and seeds. Not normally words that make your pulse race. But they do...
View ArticleThe Living Mountain author Nan Shepherd to feature on Scottish bank note
Writer Robert Macfarlane hails the Quarry Wood novelist, who will adorn £5 notes entering circulation later this year, as ‘a brilliant, progressive choice’The Scottish author Nan Shepherd, who explored...
View ArticleThe Grasmere Journal: seeing the Lake District through another Wordsworth's eyes
Dorothy Wordsworth’s notebooks reveal a formidable Romantic writer unfairly eclipsed by her brother. A new illustrated edition of The Grasmere Journal takes a fresh look Dorothy Wordsworth never...
View ArticleWellcome book prize goes to psychosomatic illness study
Neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan’s It’s All in Your Head wins the £30,000 award for ‘thoughtful, humane and heartfelt’ studyNeurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan’s exploration of psychosomatic illness, It’s All...
View ArticleYou are here: the mysterious architecture of the universe – in pictures
Astrophysicist J Richard Gott leads us on a mind-expanding tour from the familiar precincts of the solar system to the Great Wall of galaxies, the cosmic web and beyond Continue reading...
View ArticleLab Girl by Hope Jahren – what a life in science is really like
Jahren, a geobiologist, lives on reheated fast food, encounters sexism and worries so much about funding it makes her ill. This is an inspiring behind-the-scenes look at scientific researchScience is...
View ArticleCountry files: nature writers on the books that inspired them
Robert Macfarlane, Helen Macdonald, Kathleen Jamie and other contemporary writers choose the books that made them fall in love with the natural worldRobert Macfarlane: ‘Britain’s wild places are vital...
View ArticleFrom wallpapers to book covers: illustrating the bird and the bees – in pictures
Textile and wallpaper designer Timorous Beasties detail the process of illustrating the intricate covers for the Vintage Classics Birds and the Bees seriesCountry files: nature writers on the books...
View ArticleThe Running Hare: The Secret Life of Farmland by John Lewis-Stempel – review
The environmentalist’s account of the year he spent restoring wildlife to a field is enlightening and stylish“Lying down in the field at night,” writes John Lewis-Stempel, “ear close to the ground, I...
View ArticleCaptured! How wild animals really behave – in pictures
A jackal squares up to a lion and a gorilla prepares to fight his own reflection. Motion-sensitive ‘camera traps’ capture some startlingly unguarded animal behaviourContinue reading...
View ArticleJohn James Audubon and the natural history of a hoax
Brilliant work in the archives has unearthed evidence that the great ornithological artist also enjoyed some rather more fanciful workArtist and naturalist John James Audubon was a master of...
View ArticlePinpoint by Greg Milner review – how is GPS changing our world?
Anyone with a smartphone anywhere on Earth knows exactly where they are. But does that leave us lost?In early 2008, for quixotic reasons that needn’t detain us here, I decided to walk from Dubai...
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