This was only the second book I wrote, so I was thrilled to receive a handwritten letter from Peter Kindersley, the director and founder of the publishing company DK, expressing how much he liked the book and wished he had had a copy of it when he was growing up. I used my creative powers…

Well, this was the first book I ever wrote. I was working at London’s Science Museum at the time, and I had been working as a consultant on this series of books, which was conceived by the great Neil Ardley, who also wrote the other books in this ‘The Science’ series. It turned out that…