Throughout history we have told ourselves stories to try and make sense of what it all means: our place in a small corner of one of billions of galaxies, at the end of billions of years of existence. In this new book Richard Holloway takes us on a personal, scientific and philosophical journey to explore what he believes the answers to the biggest of questions are. He examines what we know about the universe into which - without any choice in the matter - we are propelled at birth and from which we are expelled at death, the stories we have told about where we come from, and the stories we tell to get through this muddling experience of life.

Thought-provoking, revelatory, compassionate and playful, Stories We Tell Ourselves is a personal reckoning with life's mysteries by one of the most important and beloved thinkers of our time.

The former Bishop of Edinburgh returns with a history of the universe and the ways we try to make meaning of it, and in the process takes a personal journey into his own beliefs. Waiting for the Last Bus and Leaving Alexandria were both Sunday Times bestsellers; the latter won the PEN/Ackerley Prize and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize Perfect for readers of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, Andrew Marr's A History of the World, and Karen Armstrong's A Short History of Myth"