All in the mind | 21 January 2016

You don’t expect to be brought close to tears by the Reith Lectures, which are after all at the most extreme end of Radio 4’s commitment to ‘educating’ its audience. Yet when Stephen Hawking delivered this year’s talks at the Royal Institution in London (in front of a lucky audience of listeners and scientists) there was both much laughter and a heightened sense of emotion.

This was not because of his plight — the eminent professor of theoretical physics has suffered from a rare form of motor neurone disease since the age of 21 and the only discernible movement in his body is in his eyes, and the twitching of his facial muscles. Nor his cheeky sense of humour, or his grace and dignity, although these are remarkable enough. It’s not even the way he has continued to work, undaunted by the obstacles presented by his illness, dependent now on those facial twitches as the only way he can make himself understood.