Simon Barnes: How to Fly

Simon Barnes explores the wonders of flight and the way different species have evolved to defy gravity – including humans

Flight fascinates us. We thrill to birds, we adore butterflies, and we compare love, religious ecstasy and artistic achievement to flight. We love the idea of it so much we invented machines that at last allowed us to fly. Many died to make human flight possible.

In How to Fly, Simon Barnes brings together all aspects of aerial life – evolution, technology, mythology, religion, nature and imagination – in a celebration of the wonders of flight. Barnes looks at the physics of flying and how flight has evolved separately multiple times over. He examines how these creatures do it: from the bees that beat their wings 230 times per second, to the extinct reptile quetzalcoatlus with its 10-metre wingspan. He also explores how the great poets, mystics, saints, musicians and athletes have all, in their different ways, succeeded in getting high and getting us high.