People often assume that data are simple, graspable and trustworthy, whereas theory is complex, recondite and slippery, and so give the former priority.

The title refers to a real place, a vast and luxurious urban-renewal project in Chengdu that is being built on the site of a former top-secret munitions factory complex.

With the world's population growing to nine billion by 2050, the Britain's former deputy PM predicts far more crucial and complex talks in Copenhagen than in Kyoto.