Welcome to the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service.

In March 1988, Professor Stephen Hawking's groundbreaking book, A Brief History of Time,

came out and quickly became a bestseller.

In 2018, Louisa Dalgo spoke to Peter Gazzardi, the editor who published it.

I wrote this book because I am very excited about the discoveries that have been made about the universe.

My original aim was to write a book that would sell on airport book stalls.

But for that, maybe the publisher should have put an naked woman rather than me on the cover.

The story of a brief history of time began in the early 1980s.

Stephen Hawking, by then, held one of the most prestigious academic posts in the world,

the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge University.

He had been diagnosed when he was 21 with motor neuron disease or ALS

and confined to a wheelchair a few years later.

In the academic world, he was a theoretical physics superstar.

But to the outside world, he was only just becoming well-known.

One day, in 1983, a young American publishing editor picked up a copy of the New York Times magazine.

On the front cover was a man in a wheelchair.

Inside was a profile of this great mind.

This genius, this remarkable intellect trapped in this body,

but his mind is soaring, exploring the depths of the universe,

questions about the birth of the universe, what happened before the universe was born,

what will happen eventually afterwards.

So I was very kind of taken by this, and I put it in my nap so I can carry it around for a few days.

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