Britain is the only country in the world to have cancelled its space programme just as it put its first rocket into orbit. Starting with this forgotten episode, The Backroom Boys tells the bittersweet story of modern British engineers and inventors. Sad, inspiring, funny and ultimately triumphant, it follows the technologists whose work kept Concorde flying, created the computer game, conquered the mobile-phone business, saved the human genome for the human race - and who sent the Beagle 2 probe to burrow in the cinnamon sands of Mars.
Britain is the only country in the world to have cancelled its space programme just as it put its first rocket into orbit. Starting with this forgotte...
'Unapologetic' is a brief, witty, personal, sharp-tongued defence of Christian belief, taking on Dawkins' 'The God Delusion' and Christopher Hitchens' 'God is Not Great'. But it isn't an argument that Christianity is true - because how could anyone know that (or indeed its opposite)?
'Unapologetic' is a brief, witty, personal, sharp-tongued defence of Christian belief, taking on Dawkins' 'The God Delusion' and Christopher Hitchens'...
The Soviet Union was founded on a fairytale. It was built on 20th-century magic called 'the planned economy', which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that the penny-pinching lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950s, the magic seemed to be working.
The Soviet Union was founded on a fairytale. It was built on 20th-century magic called 'the planned economy', which was going to gush forth an abundan...
New York, a small town on the tip of Manhattan island, 1746. One rainy evening in November, a handsome young stranger fresh off the boat pitches up at a counting-house door in Golden Hill Street: this is Mr Smith. Should the New York merchants trust him? Should they befriend him, seduce him, arrest him; maybe even kill him?
New York, a small town on the tip of Manhattan island, 1746. One rainy evening in November, a handsome young stranger fresh off the boat pitches up at...
A memoir about how, what and why we read as children.' Nick Hornby, Guardian Books of the Year'Parents, non-parents, ex-children, anyone who reads or ever read children's books - read this.
A memoir about how, what and why we read as children.' Nick Hornby, Guardian Books of the Year'Parents, non-parents, ex-children, anyone who reads or ...
A thrilling tale of murder and mystery in a city where history has run a little differently -- from the best-selling author of Golden Hill. 'Utterly immersive.' Spectator'Thrilling.' Financial Times'Unlike anything else you will read this year.' Daily Express'A classic of alternative history.' Observer'A delight.' Sunday TelegraphIt's 1922 and Americans are drinking in speakeasies, dancing to jazz, stepping quickly to the tempo of modern times. In the ancient city of Cahokia - a teeming industrial metropolis, a tinderbox of every race and creed...
A thrilling tale of murder and mystery in a city where history has run a little differently -- from the best-selling author of Golden Hill. '...
