The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life: the new sleep science
Leading neuroscientist Matthew Walker on why sleep deprivation is increasing our risk of cancer, heart attack and Alzheimer’s – and what you can do about itMatthew Walker has learned to dread the...
View ArticleDavid Attenborough's first adventures – in pictures
In 1954, a young David Attenborough was offered the chance to travel the world collecting animals for London Zoo. Filming his travels for the BBC’s Zoo Quest, he went to Guyana, Indonesia and Paraguay,...
View ArticleUniverse review: our starry night, seen from all angles
A new Phaidon photobook draws from the worlds of astronomy and art to create a complete, beautiful picture of how we see space and ourselves within it• View a gallery of more images from UniverseMany...
View ArticleThe Earth Gazers by Christopher Potter review – the missions to the moon
A new telling of the story of the Apollo astronauts between 1968 and 1972 involves nervous breakdowns, a former Nazi and an atheist churchAs he approached the moon in 1971 the Apollo 14 astronaut...
View ArticleTop 10 human-animal relationships in literature
On World Animal Day, novelist Henrietta Rose-Innes looks at some of the best depictions of this ‘crucial human task’, by James Herriot, Karen Joy Fowler and othersUnderstanding how we engage with the...
View ArticleSimon Schama heads shortlist for Baillie Gifford prize
Belonging, the second volume of his history of the Jews, will compete with five others, covering topics from science to sexuality, for the £30,000 awardThe historian Simon Schama has advanced on to the...
View ArticleApollo 14 song: a hymn to God, or to the Nazis? | Letter
Stephen Sedley speculates on links between How Great Thou Art, the Horst Wessel Song and Wernher von Braun’s contribution to the US space programmeTim Radford’s review of The Earth Gazers by...
View ArticleTamed by Alice Roberts review – 10 species that changed our world
The story of how dogs, horses, cattle, apples, rice and other species were domesticated proves an excellent perspective on deep human historyThere is a revolution going on in history – big, broad-sweep...
View ArticleThe Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris review – grisly medicine
Joseph Lister, the pioneer of antiseptic surgery, is the hero of this story of Victorian doctors with grubby hands and infected knivesLong after William Hogarth depicted a gaggle of bewigged and...
View ArticleThe River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks review – an agility of enthusiasms
These posthumously published essays range from psychiatry to plagiarism to near-death experiencesOne March in the mid 1990s I checked into a cheap hotel in Helsinki. I dropped my bag on the floor and,...
View ArticleThe River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks review – ‘a lifetime of wisdom’
Oliver Sacks’s posthumous essays make for a marvellous series of meditations on his scientific heroes, from Freud to DarwinYou could make the argument that Oliver Sacks was of the last generation in...
View Article‘Have you seen the maggots yet?’ Lindsey Fitzharris on the gruesome history...
The medical historian is obsessed with mortality – and her new book examines the work of early surgeons, including Robert Liston, the ‘fastest knife in the West End’The first time Lindsey Fitzharris...
View ArticleThe Inner Life of Animals by Peter Wohlleben review – a revolution in how we...
Following his bestselling The Hidden Life of Trees, the author explores the emotions and intelligence of animals. The ‘new biology’ has big moral implicationsJohn Henry Newman, later Cardinal Newman,...
View ArticleAlice Roberts: ‘We think that if we get emotive, we become less objective’
Broadcaster, author, anthropologist and qualified doctor Alice Roberts is on a mission to prove that science needs to engage with the public – and be more diversePhysical anthropologist, author,...
View ArticleThe Secret Life of Cows by Rosamund Young review – what is it like to be a cow?
An organic farmer identifies empathy, happiness and eccentricity in her cattle. Despite the seeming naivety of her narrative voice, she is well aware of what she’s up toWhat is it like to be a cow? If...
View ArticleThe Inner Life of Animals by Peter Wohlleben – review
The beauty of beasts is that we will never quite understand them – but this book gives it a decent shotWe don’t really know what makes animals behave the way they do, but several writers have had a...
View ArticleThe Unexpected Truth About Animals by Lucy Cooke – digested read
‘Penguins? A bunch of pathological narcissists. Pandas? Addicted to three-way sex. Toads? Complete bastards’Scientists have been misunderstanding animals for centuries. We viewthe animal kingdom...
View ArticleErnst Haeckel: the art of evolution – in pictures
The influential evolutionary scientist, who coined such terms as ‘stem cell’ and ‘ecology’, was also a virtuoso illustrator. The editor of a new book celebrating this work introduces some...
View ArticleThe Robin: A Biography by Stephen Moss review – red in tweet and claw
This portrait of a British favourite is engaging but brings little new to the bird table…Big-eyed and baby-faced with a soft, plump body, but with an expression and demeanour too pert to be cuddly. A...
View ArticlePioneering work by female entomologist goes up for auction
Three-hundred-year-old guide to the insects of Suriname by artist and explorer Maria Sibylla Merian is expected to fetch £120,000A rare first edition of the 300-year-old book in which the entomologist,...
View Article