JUNE 2008

The Royal Institution’s new book club, the Fiction Lab, kicks off on the evening of Monday 9 June with a discussion of my novel “The Sun and Moon Corrupted” (see http://www.rigb.org/). I will be coming along to face the critics later in the evening.

On Monday, 16 June, I will be back at the RI taking part in a debate on human spaceflight with Kevin Fong (see http://www.rigb.org/).

APRIL 2008

I have two new books appearing at the start of May:

• "Universe of Stone: Chartres Cathedral and the Triumph of the Medieval Mind"
  Published by Bodley Head/HarperCollins, 2008

• "The Sun and Moon Corrupted"
  A novel published by Portobello, 2008

I have been awarded the newly instituted Lagrange Prize of the ISI and CRT Foundations in Italy. The organizers say "Every year three prizes are awarded, two for outstanding scientific contributions to the field of complexity and complex systems in all disciplines, the third one for work aimed at dissemination and popularization of the concepts and notions of complexity science." My award is in the latter category.

FEBRUARY 2008

“Elegant Solutions” has been awarded the 2007 Dingle Prize by the British Society for the History of Science for “the best recent book that communicates the history of science, technology and or medicine to a wide audience of non-specialists”.