ENGINEERING THE END OF MEDIEVAL WARFARE

Lizzie Wade Apocalypse How catastrophe transformed our world and can forge new futures 320pp. William Collins. £20. Luke Kemp Goliath’s Curse The history and future of societal collapse 592pp. Viking.

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

This moment is surely imbued with the most global symbolism. It was when, according to the Old Norse-Icelandic sagas, adventurers sailed across the north Atlantic from settlements on the west coast of

HUMANITY HAS CHANGED AN AWFUL LOT IN THE PAST 58 YEARS. THE MOON? NOT SO MUCH. It was in 1968 that astronauts first drew near the moon, and it will be early this year, if all goes as planned, that a c

The vibration is as extraordinary as the noise is deafening and we’re not even in the air. But I guess that’s what you get when there’s 1500bhp’s-worth of 27 litres of two stage supercharged, quad-cam