The railway route between Oxford and Cambridge – nicknamed the Varsity Line – was opened in stages in the nineteenth century. Running roughly east to west, it crossed several major trunk routes linking London with the North and Midlands, and became part of the LMS in 1923 Railway Grouping. Its strategic value was recognised during the Second World War as it allowed freight traffic to avoid London and several new connections to the line were built. Despite post-war plans to develop the line...

We are living in a Golden Age of Physics. Forty or so years ago, three brilliant, yet little-known scientists - an American, a Dutchman, and an Englishman - made breakthroughs which later inspired the construction of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva: a 27 kilometre-long machine that cost ten billion dollars, took twenty years to build, and finally discovered a particle consistent with the Higgs boson. The Infinity Puzzle is the inside story of those forty years of resea...

I made what may be called a rash and foolish marriage to a man I scarcely knew.1904: Cathie longs for adventure. A whirlwind romance with soldier and artist Herbert Jackson offers this and more, but Herbert is violently jealous and she is soon fighting for her freedom – and her life. A fictionalised account of Catherine Carswell's first marriage, What We Did in the Dark is a compelling portrait of a trail-blazing writer.

It was at the height of the Cold War, in the summer of 1950, when Bruno Pontecorvo mysteriously vanished behind the Iron Curtain. Who was he, and what caused him to disappear? Was he simply a physicist, or also a spy and communist radical? A protege of Enrico Fermi, Pontecorvo was one of the most promising nuclear physicists in the world. He spent years hunting for the Higgs boson of his day -- the neutrino -- a nearly massless particle thought to be essential to the process of particle de...

Ceremony as therapyFormal ceremonies seem to be universal in human experience, addressing something very deep and basic in the human psyche. They tap into that vast subconscious reservoir of wisdom and strength that every human being possesses. To these qualities ceremonies add their own understandings of life and of God. They emphasize the presence of God in all things.The important transitions in our lives inevitably create anxietyeven happy tran...

Human rights are acquiring an increasingly prominent role on the world stage. Interest in, concern about and action on human rights are widespread and rising, albeit in a far from globally even, uniform and untroubled fashion. Human rights have generated a booming global industry while having become, not unconnectedly, highly controversial and deeply contested. Human rights matters have emerged as a major source of disagreement, dispute and discord at and between the local, regional and gl...

An irresistible comedy of manners about three generations of a Chicago restaurant family and the deep-fried, beer-battered, cream cheese-frosted love that feeds them all—from the best-selling author of Girls in White Dresses“Laugh-out-loud funny, and deeply resonant to our times. I was so happy to be in the Sullivan family’s Chicago bar, caught in the swirl of three generations of grudges, love affairs and fraught personal decisions.”—Ann Na...

**A Guardian Best Science and Nature Book of 2025**From the award-winning science writer, a new history of the development of nuclear power and the extraordinary minds behind itHenry Becquerel’s accidental discovery, in Paris in 1896, of a faint smudge on a photographic plate sparked a chain of discoveries which would unleash the atomic age.Destroyer of Worlds is the story of how pursuit of this hidden source of nuclear power, which...

Buckinghamshire Buses tells the story of the omnibus in the county, from its roots in stagecoach travel to the present day. Proximity to London gave the London General Omnibus Company access to Buckinghamshire in the early years of the twentieth century, but pirate bus companies like Red Rover also competed. All the express coach services radiating from London into towns like Ayslesbury and the ever-expanding suburbia were nationalised by the London Transport Act of 1933, forming Greenline...

Frank Close breaks down complex concepts in physics in this collection of three of his bestselling books. Including Neutrino, Antimatter, and The Void, this set brings to life the fascinating science of particle physics, neutrinos, antimatter, and nothing. Combing the knowledge of a renowned physicist with the art of a skilled writer, enter the world of physics in an enthralling and readable way.

Located mainly across Portsea Island on the south coast, the city of Portsmouth is best known for its maritime heritage and association with the Royal Navy. Its strategic location presented obvious importance in wartime, which saw Admiral Lord Nelson sailing from the harbour to his victory at Trafalgar and his doom. Today it is still a busy port, but the ships that set sail are for tourism, business and friendship, not war. In this book, authors R. J. Cook & K. C. Close provide a fascinati...

A blazingly honest portrait of ambition and marriage, and a brilliantly funny send-up of young D.C., from the bestselling author of Girls in White Dresses.“Hilarious.... A pleasure to read.”—The Washington PostA New York newlywed, Beth was supportive when her husband, Matt, decided to follow his political dreams all the way to Washington. Yet soon after they move to D.C., Beth realizes that she hates everything about it: t...