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Over the last five centuries, Britain has been the well-spring of some of the world’s greatest discoveries, sports, inventions and cures. Born in the UK reveals almost all of them in a single book.
The UK, with less than 1% of the world’s population, has spawned more new devices, medicines, leisure pursuits, and clothing than any other country, ancient or modern, including the USA. Thousands of ‘things’ have been discovered, invented, conceived and developed by its citizens, and the relentless pace of the new, if anything, is quickening.
For Nobel prizes per head of population, no country comes close to the UK’s 114, and only the USA, with 305, but with five times the population, has won more. Germany has won 54, Russia 22, Holland 18 and Japan only 12.
Born in the UK celebrates that almost mystical blend of inquisitiveness and ingenuity about the British.
Proving that genius and madness may be close companions, there are grouped some of the most bizarre and comic inventions ever dreamed up. The biting toothbrush, the sex chair and tiddlywinks, come from the fevered imaginations of British citizens. That same source gave the world the electric motor, the Worldwide Web, the bouncing bomb, and discovered the structure of life itself, the double helix of the DNA molecule. It also produced Marmite and discovered pulsars.
Trevor Homer’s new book, a companion to the Book of Origins, reveals surprising British origins, not just of everyday objects, but of some of the most world-changing, and far-reaching ‘stuff’ imaginable. Digging into the corners of British history (Balti/baseball/yob culture), reveals the hidden areas in which the UK has led the way.
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