From red giant to white dwarf

Richard Cohen, who was a publishing director of Hutchinson and Hodder before moving to New York where he now teaches Creative Writing, is the author of one previous book: By the Sword: Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers and Olympic Champions (2002). This comprehensive history drew on his deep, personal knowledge of the subject, for Cohen was five times the British national sabre champion, selected for the Olympic team every time between 1972 and 1984. Its illustrations include a superb shot of the author flying through the air sideways, executing a ‘horizontal fleche’ against Dom Philip Jebb at Downside Abbey.

Chasing the Sun is even more ambitious. Cohen says that when he was working in publishing he wanted to commission this book, simply because he realised that he knew so little about ‘what, above all other things, governs our lives’, but he could find no author willing to undertake such a wide-ranging account.