“The most gripping, exciting and intense book I have read in the year that I have been interviewing writers on this show. Just a wonderful book, I can't recommend it enough."
Giles Coren, Times Radio
EXPLORE HUMANITY’S GREATEST ADVENTURE
Twenty-seven-years old, a loyal communist and father of two, Yuri Gagarin blasts into the skies inside a tiny cannonball-shaped capsule at the top of a modified Soviet R-7 missile – replacing the nuclear warhead it was originally designed for.
Eleven minutes later he is in orbit, travelling at ten times the speed of a rifle bullet. The first human ever to leave the planet.