HOW TO FLY: TAKING WING WITH BIRDS BATS INSECTS/ HUMANS (HB)

Bestselling writer Simon Barnes explores evolution, technology, mythology, religion, nature and imagination in this celebration of the wonders of flight. He examines how flight has evolved separately four times (five, if we count humans), from the nocturnal agility of bats and bees that beat their wings 230 times per second, to the extinct quetzalcoatlus with its 10-metre wingspan and Arctic terns that travel 75,000km every year. And beyond the natural world, we see how ideas about love, religious ecstasy and artistic achievement have adopted and inspired notions of flight.