Allan Chapman was born and brought up in Clifton, Salford and is very much to heart a Manchester man. A historian at Wadham College, Oxford, he specialises in the history of astronomy and medicine. Although an experienced lecturer, writer and broadcaster, Gods in the Sky is the first television series that he has presented. The accompanying book, published by MacMillan for Channel 4, was written in part during filming in Egypt, Rome and Greece. It is the most historically encompassing book so far in his repertoire, spanning over four thousand years in the development of our understanding of the heavens, from both scientific and religious viewpoints.

From the earliest anonymous interpretation of astronomical bodies in Babylon and Egypt, Allan takes us on a more personalised exposition of Greek astronomy in which his unerring facility to bring to life people at the frontier of scientific research has always been his strong point. Allied to this is his keen perception of the effects of religion on the science and perceptions of the heavens; that of the Jews, Christians and Moslems that interweave and steer the development of European astronomy through a thousand years of the so-called dark ages down to the Renaissance of the 17th century when the more familiar characters, Galileo, Copernicus and Newton take up the story.

Kevin Kilburn, F.R.A.S.

Available from Amazon.co.uk