One of my early popular science books, The Man Who Stopped Time , was on the photographic and moving picture pioneer, Eadweard Muybridge, who did most of his work in Pennsylvania and California, but who was born in Kingston-upon-Thames. Here's an account I wrote at the time of hunting for Muybridge in Kingston. When getting under the skin on Edweard Muybridge you can’t avoid Kingston-upon-Thames. It inevitably means regular visits to the North Kingston Centre, an unfriendly, echoing civic building tagged onto a school, which houses the local history room. The room, entered through a strangely bunker-like door, resembles every reference library you have ever been in. Old well-used tables, a slightly musty smell and a few modern contrivances – PCs, photocopier, microfilm readers – sitting uncomfortably alongside the huge bound volumes of the local paper. Very friendly and helpful staff, though. But that’s a little world of its own as is the Kingston Museum, with its dramatic Muyb...
The writing life from popular science author Brian Clegg.