Science is continuously revealing astonishing insights into ourselves and our world. Transmitting those advances to a wider public, while reminding specialists whom they really work for, is a rare craft. For the past half century, Brian Fagan, who has died aged 88, did that through his writing and speaking, shaping public understanding of ancient human history.
Unlike Carl Sagan or David Attenborough, who brought cosmology and nature into millions of homes, Brian never fronted a television series. But his well-researched output was prodigious: including revised editions, he wrote or edited the equivalent of two books for every year of his life.
