In 2016 Professor Stephen Hawking delivered the BBC Reith Lectures on a subject that has fascinated him for decades - black holes. In these flagship lectures the legendary physicist argues that if we could only understand black holes and how they challenge the very nature of space and time, we could unlock the secrets of the universe.

Charts the course of the author's long writing career: from his schooldays through to his first writing job on the Bucks Free Press; to the origins of his debut novel, "The Carpet People"; and on again to the dizzy mastery of the phenomenally successful "Discworld" series.

It was on 6 June 2004 that BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner and cameraman Simon Cumbers were ambushed by Islamist gunmen in a quiet Riyadh back street. Simon was killed outright. Frank was hit in the shoulder and leg. As he lay in the dust, a figure stood over him and pumped four more bullets into his body at point-blank range.

Abducted from her West African village at the age of eleven and sold as a slave in the American South, Aminata Diallo thinks only of freedom. After escaping the plantation, torn from her husband and child, she passes through Manhattan in the chaos of the Revolutionary War, is shipped to Nova Scotia, and then joins a group of freed slaves.