Albert Einstein changed the way physicists view the universe - and transformed the way we all see the world. Just over one hundred years ago, his Theory of Relativity stunned scientists, but today it is integral to modern thought as the most important scientific discovery of the twentieth century. I[...]

Did you know that the Cornish pasty was invented to protect tin miners from arsenic poisoning, or that the word 'salary' comes from Roman soldiers being paid their wages in salt? Why do we eat goose (or turkey) at Christmas? Is the Scotch egg actually from Scotland and what did some retired crusader[...]

Written during the bleakest days of the Second World War, this volume argues for an acceptance of reality that encompasses revolt, passion and, above all, liberty. It also contains several other essays, including lyrical evocations of the sunlit cities of Algiers and Oran, and the settings of other [...]

A peerless work of philosophical fiction that is as shocking today as when it was first published, the "Penguin Modern Classics" edition of Albert Camus' "The Outsider" is translated by Joseph Laredo. Meursault will not pretend. After the death of his mother, everyone is shocked when he shows no sad[...]

The unfinished manuscript of "The First Man" was discovered in the wreckage of car accident in which Camus died in 1960. Although it was not published for over thirty years, it was an instant bestseller when it finally appeared in 1994. The first man' is Jacques Cormery, whose poverty-stricken child[...]

Jean-Baptiste Clamence is a soul in turmoil. Over several drunken nights he regales a chance acquaintance with his story. From this successful former lawyer and seemingly model citizen a compelling, self-loathing catalogue of guilt, hypocrisy and alienation pours forth. "The Fall" (1956) is a brilli[...]

Handsome, worldly and intelligent, Solal holds a position of enviable power in 1930s Geneva. But as Under-Secretary-General of the League of Nations, he has become bitterly disillusioned by international affairs and the self-serving people who surround him. His one hope for redemption is through lov[...]

She was waiting, but she didn't know for what. She was aware only of her solitude, and of the penetrating cold, and of a greater weight in the region of her heart.' Camus' writing confronts the great philosophical dilemmas of our time with piercing clarity. These three powerful and evocative stories[...]

'My mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know.' Sandra Smith's new translation, based on close listening to a recording of Camus reading his work aloud on French radio in 1954, sensitively renders the subtleties and dream-like atmosphere of L'Etranger. In "The Outsider" (1942), his classic[...]

According to Einstein himself, this book is intended "to give an exact insight into the theory of Relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physic[...]