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9.07 a.m., April 12, 1961. A top-secret rocket site in the USSR. A young Russian sits inside a tiny capsule on top of the Soviet Union’s most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile – originally designed to carry a nuclear warhead – and blasts into the skis. His name is Yuri Gagarin and he is about to make history.
Travelling at almost 18,000 miles per hour – ten times faster than a rifle bullet – Gagarin circles the globe in just 106 minutes. While his launch begins in total secrecy, within hours of his landing he has become a world celebrity – the first human to leave the planet.
Beyond tells the thrilling story behind that epic flight on its 60th anniversary. It happened at the height of the Cold War as the US and USSR confronted each other across an Iron Curtain. Both superpowers took enormous risks to get a man into space first – the Americans in the full glare of the media, the Soviets under deep cover. Both trained their teams of astronauts to the edges of the endurable. In the end the race between them would come down to the wire.
Drawing on extensive original research and the vivid testimonies of eyewitnesses, many of whom have never spoken before, Stephen Walker unpacks secrets that were hidden for decades and takes the reader into the drama – featuring the scientists, engineers and political leaders on both sides, and above all the American astronauts and their Soviet rivals battling for supremacy in the heavens.
Stephen will be in conversation with Colin Thubron, an acknowledged master of travel writing, and the winner of many prizes and awards.
REVIEWS
Suddenly, every previous biography has been superseded … A spellbinding and completely authoritative account’ - Colin Burgess
‘Brings to life the space race and the extraordinary story of Yuri Gagarin … A history that reads like a thriller’ - Anne Applebaum
‘The very best account of Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering space mission - vivid, thoughtful, and respectful of the characters in the story. A wonderfully rendered story of an epochal event’- Asif Siddiqi, author of The Challenge to Apollo
‘Beyond has the exhilaration of a fine thriller, but it is vividly embedded in the historic tensions of the Cold War, and peopled by men and women brought sympathetically, and sometimes tragically, to life’- Colin Thubron
‘Dramatic and dynamic. Stephen Walker’s passion for his subject along with his exceptional research and attention to detail have brought my father’s extraordinary journey vividly to life’ - Elena Gagarina, daughter of Yuri Gagarin
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stephen Walker was born in London. He has a BA in History from Oxford and an MA in the History of Science from Harvard. His previous book Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima was a New York Times bestseller and is in development as a movie for Working Title Films, to be directed by Cary Fukunaga with a screenplay by Tom Stoppard. He is also an award-winning documentary director – his films have won an Emmy, a BAFTA and the Rose d’Or, Europe’s most prestigious documentary award. He lives in London.
ABOUT COLIN THUBRON
Colin Thubron is an acknowledged master of travel writing, and the winner of many prizes and awards. His first writing was about the Middle East - Damascus, Lebanon and Cyprus. In 1982 he travelled into the Soviet Union in an ancient Morris Marina, pursued by the KGB, a journey he recorded in Among the Russians. From these early experiences developed his classic travel books: Behind the Wall (winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Award), The Lost Heart of Asia, In Siberia (Prix Bouvier) and Shadow of the Silk Road. His most recent book is To a Mountain in Tibet (all available in Vintage). Colin Thubron was President of the Royal Society of Literature from 2010 to 2017.