Next year sees the centenary of Albert Einstein’s formulation of the general theory of relativity (which he published in 1916); Pedro Ferreira has got in early with his contribution to the commemorations. However, rather than focusing on the events of 1915, he concentrates on the development of the general theory since then, in particular over the past fifty years, during which it has blossomed into full flower. All the topical buzzwords get a mention – pulsars, quasars, black holes, Hawking radiation, dark energy and more.

As this suggests, Ferreira is more concerned with the physics than with the people involved in the story, which is what you would expect from an Oxford professor of astrophysics. But he does not go into any potentially scary science, preferring to dance lightly over the subject, giving an overview