'The Great Acceleration' picks up speed...

It's a week to go until 'The Great Acceleration' hits the shops, and it's already getting some encouraging attention.

It started last Monday with an appearance on 'Start the Week' with Andrew Marr to discuss whether faster really is better - you can listen to the episode again online, or download the podcast. I also went on Jo Good's show on BBC Radio London to talk about the pressures of city living.

The book's also been the subject of a news story in the Times, which was picked up by the Mail. Rosie Millard wrote about my thesis in the final print edition of the Independent - and I appeared in the Sunday Times news review to explain why life really is getting faster.

The scariest thing, however, was the appearance of the first review - by Daniel Finkelstein in the Times. Luckily for me, he loved it, calling the book 'excellent' and saying: 'It’s rare to go for a whole paragraph of this book without learning something unexpected, funny or disturbing.' The Times also made it their book of the week.

I mention all this not to boast (well, a little), nor to persuade you to buy the book (well, actually...). It's more that I've spent several years wrestling with these ideas, hoping that other people would find them even half as fascinating as I did. It's really, really gratifying that they seem to be doing so.

If you want to find out what the fuss is about, you can pre-order the book via the box elsewhere on the page, or via this link

Start the Week - 'Is Faster Better?'

UPDATE: The episode's now been aired. You can listen again here

I'll be appearing on 'Start the Week' with Andrew Marr tomorrow morning, in the first stage of the publicity campaign for 'The Great Acceleration'. The topic is 'Is Faster Better?', and the panel includes Carl Honoré (author of 'In Praise of Slow' and 'The Slow Fix'), Prof Steve Jones (veteran science writer and author of 'No Need for Geniuses', about scientists and the French Revolution) and Sarah Dunant (author, critic and general literary/historical expert).

This is, obviously, mildly terrifying, but I'm looking forward to the discussion. I also gave my first talk about the book over the weekend, at the Cambridge Union - it was part of 'ThinkCon', which in turn was part of the Cambridge Science Festival. There was a decent, interested crowd and I hope I made some interesting points. I also sold my very first copy of the book. To my brother-in-law. Baby steps, eh?

Technical difficulties

Eager readers may have noticed that I haven't updated for a while. This is partly due to an insanely busy schedule, and partly due to the fact that my hosting service has taken to killing my half-written updates at seemingly random intervals, invariably a few seconds before I remember to hit the 'save' button.

So, in lieu of the beautifully crafted thousand-word exploration of the process of publishing a book (which I'll rewrite once I've stopped crying), here's a brief highlights reel. I've written half a dozen pieces on British politics for Politico Europe, book reviews for the Telegraph of 'This Is London' and 'Comrade Corbyn' (both well worth reading, incidentally), pieces for CapX on Brexit, the NHS, immigration and the Sex Pistols. This last week has been particularly crazy: among other things, I've written on the Zika virus for the Wellcome Trust, Apple vs the FBI for the Telegraph, Britain's problems building tech giants for the FT and Facebook Instant Articles on Medium. 

Looming behind it all, however, has been THE BOOK. As of today, we've finalised the contents and cover, sent preview copies to various eminent figures and got them to say nice things, arranged various articles to coincide with publication, and I've even booked a venue for a party. (I say we because most of this has been taken care of by the team at Bloomsbury, who are immensely experienced at easing panicky novices through the process.) I've still got no idea how it will be received. But I want to be able to tell myself I did everything I could to give it the best chance to find an audience. More on that - much more - as publication date approaches...