MachineMachine /stream

There is something stirring in the world of science writing. Since it emerged as a labelled corner of the bookshop, the genre has been dominated by practising scientists who also write; Dawkins way ahead of the pack, then Steve Jones and Richard Fortey. Bill Bryson, of course, is the great exception but he is sui generis — millions would buy his take on the history of beer mats if that’s what he wrote about.

But this year’s winner of the Royal Society science book prize, science’s Booker, was Richard Holmes for The Age of Wonder. He is our great Romantic biographer, who has made the lives of the Romantic poets his life’s work. For this book he boldly took on science in a way humanists used to shrink from; he sat at the feet of Cambridge scientists and after ten years of research felt confident enough to discuss the amazing cross-fertilisation of art and science at the time of Coleridge, Shelley, Keats and — his own addition to the list — Humphry Davy, chemist and poet.

In a recent ar