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"The ultimate aim is to apply this research to combining the nuclei of Deuterium (heavy Hydrogen) of which there is an almost unlimited supply in the sea, to produce a source of power." So reads the caption for this image, taken on a press trip to Culham laboratory in 1964 – where experiments into fusion were already taking place.

'Phoenix' was the name given to Culham's first major fusion project. Phoenix itself was a 'mirror machine' – and used magnetic mirrors to control the behaviour of charged plasma in a linear (as opposed to circular) fusion device.

1957: young Prince Charles chases an errant calf on a farm at Balmoral, the Scottish royal estate first bought by Queen Victoria – his great-great-great grandmother.

Though the Americans would eventually win the race to the moon, British scientists and engineers had long speculated on designs that could make the journey. Here, Kenneth W. Gatland, then Vice President of the British Interplanetary Society, shows a model of a proposed lunar lander on BBC's Panorama programme, January 1959. The lander, nicknamed MIGRANT (Moon Instrumented Guided Rocket and Notifying Transmitter) was designed to detach from an orbiter to land on the moon, much like the Apollo system.