When did you first hear about Jeremiah Horrocks? As a child, I saw him and his telescope on the stained-glass windows at St Michael’s Church in Much Hoole, Lancashire. The windows, depicting his groun

→ When John Logie Baird demonstrated the first working television set in 1926, a theatre impresario was so worried about the impact on the West End that he offered the scientist £1,000 to throw his de

A HUNDRED YEARS ago on 26 January 1926, in an attic room in London’s Soho (more famous for ladies of the night than technological breakthroughs), a Scottish engineer gave the first public display of p

There is much to admire in Andrew Graham-Dixon’s study of Vermeer—but not its tendency to overinterpret the old master’s work “Johannes Vermeer is the most laconic of the Dutch old masters,” Andrew Gr

Ayoush Lazikani The Medieval Moon A history of haunting and blessing 272pp. Yale University Press. £20 (US $30). Something fundamental changed in our relationship with the moon when we realized we cou

ENGINEERING THE END OF MEDIEVAL WARFARE