A Brief History of Time has now sold an estimated nine million copies worldwide – something of a hard act for its author to follow. In what is being promoted as the ‘sequel’ to that book, Professor Hawking gives an account of his attempt to combine Einstein’s Theory of Relativity with Richard Feynman’s idea of multiple histories, in order to reach the grail of a Theory of Everything – or big TOE, as it’s charmingly named. This is a book about superstrings and p-branes, holography and supergravity, about how the ‘cosmic seed’ from which our universe derived was as small as a nut. The publishers are not yet releasing much text, but enough to see that it will be a fascinating (if challenging) read. And one enhanced throughout with 200 striking full colour illustrations and jazzed-up diagrams.

Stephen Hawking is an English cosmologist, theoretical physicist, author and the director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge. He is a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.