The Lunar Men: The friends who made the future 1730-1810

Led by Erasmus Darwin, the Lunar Society of Birmingham were a group of eighteenth-century amateur experimenters who met monthly on the Monday night nearest to the full moon. Echoing to the thud of pistons and the wheeze of snorting engines, Jenny Uglow´s vivid and swarming group portrait brings to life the inventors, artisans and tycoons who shaped and fired the modern world.