Mark Cantrell's Blog, page 38

News: Battle of the Five Towns In Bid To Win Culture Prize

Game of towns

Author Mark Cantrell might find himself living in a City of Culture, if his adopted home town of Stoke-on-Trent manages to seize the crown...

BY the end of the year, Stoke-on-Trent will know if it's been successful in its bid to succeed Hull as the UK City of Culture.

Out of an original 11 contenders, Stoke is one of five towns and cities that made it onto the recently announced shortlist. The city now has to face off against Coventry, Paisley, Sunderland, and Swansea in its eff...

Media: Indie Lit Fest Launch For Citizen Zero

Novel question: Is this the future we made? 

All hell breaks loose in August 2017 when a plot to unseat the British Prime Minister will throw the country into chaos – fictionally speaking, of course.

NEXT month, Inspired Quill releases Citizen Zero, the second title published from author Mark Cantrell, following the success of his previous work, Silas Morlock.

The novel is officially released on 25 August 2017, just a day ahead of the author's appearance in Bradford, West Yorkshire...

Blog: A Month Or More Of Mondays

Don't give up on the day job...

Mark Cantrell muses on the ironies of life and work. Back in June, he wasn't expecting to share something in common with the protagonist of his latest novel – then he found himself out of a job...

FATE, it seems, certainly has a sense of irony.

My day job came to an abrupt and unexpected end the day after June's general election. The company that had employed me for more than a decade was declared bust – so we were all redundant. Ouch! Since then it...

Science: Old Bones And Tangled Roots Put T-Rex In His Place

Dinosaur family tree is just plain wrong, say scientists

We think we know dinosaurs, right? Well think again, writes Mark Cantrell . According to scientists at the University of Cambridge, we've got the family tree all wrong

FOR 130 years, palaeontologists had it all figured. But now scientists at the University of Cambridge, working with their peers at the Natural History Museum in London, have come to a startling conclusion – we’ve messed up the dinosaur family tree.

Cue red face...

Long Read: Poverty Is Creating Another Kind Of Banking Crisis

A symbol of a fractured and failing society

Food banks are emergency lifelines for a growing number of people and they have no place in a supposedly civilised society, writes Mark Cantrell – their existence ought to shame us all

FOOD banks doubtless speak volumes about the willingness of people to donate goods or time to help others less fortunate, and in that respect they are something of a ‘good’ news story, but this mustn’t be allowed to sugar coat what ought to be...

Society: Evidence Shows UK Needs More Social Housing

Breaking the tenure of last resort

By now it ought to be obvious that we need to build many more social homes if we’re to make a start on fixing the broken housing market. The evidence continues to mount, writes Mark Cantrell , so why are we still dragging our feet?

EVIDENCE of a critical need for more social housing in the UK continues to mount, but with councils still blocked from building on a large scale, and the housing association sector gripped by an ambition to become up-market p...

News: Artists Take To The Skyline

Athena is rising over Leeds

A landmark building in Leeds has become the canvas for a pair of street artists who are painting the UK's tallest mural on its façade, writes Mark Cantrell. The installation won't just jazz up the skyline but also – it's hoped – earn the city a few minutes of fame on the international scene.

Athena Rising, as the mural is called, was commissioned by East Street Arts for its citywide street art project, A City Less Grey. The installation forms the c...

Science: Manufacturing Brain And Muscle Tissue From Stem Cells Just Got Faster

The cells that Man made

We many not be able to grow custom-made humans in vats just yet, writes Mark Cantrell , but scientists have cracked a clunky problem – how to 'bulk grow' brain and muscle tissues from stem cells in just a matter of days

SCIENTISTS at the University of Cambridge have figured out how to manufacture millions of human brain and muscle cells in a matter of days, but growing a custom-made anthropoid in a vat remains a distant prospect.

For that we probably ought to be g...

Blog: Fear And Loathing As Polls Draw To A Close

[image error]Apprehension reigns as we wait to learn our fate

With just under an hour to go until the polling booths close, Mark Cantrell shares some quickfire thoughts on the divergent path presented by the UK’s snap general election…

This is a strange election.

It’s strange for many reasons, but I’m saying this now on account of the nerves. This is the first election, as far as I remember, that I’ve ever had such a sense of apprehension about the outcome.

In part, it’s...

Science: Students Plan To Be Wright Brothers In Space

Forget blast off, spread your wings and fly 

A bunch of students – that's right students – from the University of Manchester are aiming to become the Wright Brothers of space with the world's first working spaceplane, writes Mark Cantrell

THE dream of spaceflight reaches high, whether that's to Mars or the stars, but to get off the ground we still rely on the brute force of rocketry to climb up the gravity well and reach that essential baby step to the final frontier –...