How did photography bring about social reform? What connects refrigeration to Hollywood? And how did our battle against dirt help create smartphones? In this story of ingenious breakthroughs and unsung heroes, Steven Johnson explores the essential innovations that changed the world and how we live in it. Steven Johnson is the US bestselling author of Where Good Ideas Come From, The Invention of Air, The Ghost Map, and Everything Bad Is Good for You,...

The world hasn?t met with destruction on any of the long list of predicted doomsday dates, but the possibility may have got you thinking: has science created more problems than it has solved? What is the point of science at all? Geoffrey Gorham considers these questions and explores the social and ethical implications of science by linking them to issues facing scientists today: human extinction, extraterrestrial intelligence, space colonisation,...

Christmas time is approaching at the Phoenix Munitions Factory and Gladys, Kitty, Edna and the rest of the Bomb Girls are determined to make this a year to remember. With Myrtle's health in decline, Edna's love life beginning to take flight, a shy new arrival in their midst and continual hard work on the factory floor, life is never quiet in Pendle. But Gladys, back from performing for the troops on the front, is sullen and sad and her friends are...

As enemy planes continue to bombard the North West of England, the members of Great Paxford's WI fight harder than ever to persevere. Teresa Lucas has reshaped her life to become the perfect wife - but will the arrival of a new guest throw her world off kilter? Laura Campbell is grieving for her father, but in the midst of tragedy, a new future beckons. Pat Simms plans to escape her difficult life at the end of the war, but when things change at home,...

Provocative, funny and brilliantly reported, join Jenny Kleeman as she meets the strange people who are creating our future and changing what it means to be human today.

A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year 'Hopeful and angry, joyful and tear-jerking' Grazia 'An extraordinary and compelling book' Daily Telegraph 'Prickles with beautiful, comic and brutal details' Observer 'Oral history at its finest' Daily Mail Homecoming draws on over a hundred first-hand interviews, archival recordings and memoirs by the women and men who came to Britain from the West Indies between the late 1940s and...

Elsie's worked her way up at Swift's Jam Factory from the shop floor to the top, and now it's her time to shine. But when she's involved in an incident involving her half-sister Millie's new husband, she is forced to keep it secret - the truth could threaten their sisterly bond. Dot is dogged by fear, coming to terms with her mother's rejection of her. She should be enjoying the happiness she craves with her beloved Cess, instead, she's trapped in...

A touching and atmospheric love story - When Anna Harvik travels to Norway in 1946 in order to visit the family of her late husband, the country is only just recovering from five cruel years of Nazi occupation. So it is with surprise that she finds in this cold and bitter country the capacity for new love and perhaps even a new home.