I started my working life in a university, earning a PhD and doing metallurgical research. I ended it in a comprehensive school, teaching all the sciences to students aged 11−18.

The more I worked on explaining scientific ideas to my students, the more I became curious about how everything was connected, and how the universe had evolved from the Big Bang to be what it is now.

I had discovered from my teaching that the best way to understand something is to explain it for someone else. So, when I left teaching, I set about writing “The Communal Universe”, to try to join the “dots” in the process of the universe’s evolution.

In my book I show that everything in the universe is inter-connected, from fundamental sub-atomic quarks to human consciousness. I think I’ve found the dots, and joined them up, and discovered a universe that is more coherent and dynamic than I could have imagined when I started.