Paul Murdin has spent over forty years working as an astronomer in the UK, the USA, Australia and Spain. He is currently works at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge. Murdin has written numerous popular and scholarly books on astronomy and is a regular commentator for the BBC and CNN. In a review by A.C. Grayling of the book on which this talk is based, he has been praised for his “genius for lucid explanation and attractive detail”.