When I re-read Hamnet I could see what the book could do that the movie couldn’t and also what the movie could do that is hard to achieve in a book. Physicality is something the medium of film imparts directly – in pictures, no less. Countryside, buildings, streets, clothes ­– all these have to be described by an author and realised in the mind of a reader. Good cinema hands them to you to enjoy in glorious colour. Hamnet the movie does this movie thing very well and then dou

What if I told you that this is a book about quasicrystals that reads like a thriller? You’d think I was nuts. Well, this is a book about the search for a quasicrystal, something thought to be impossible, that reads like a thriller. The subtitle of The Second Kind of Impossible is The Extraordinary Quest for a New Kind of Matter. Now, we’re getting to it. Matter is matter, isn’t it? New sorts of matter might be the subject of science fiction but not of real science.