Master of the universe  Christopher Potter's history of the
cosmos has been hailed as a popular science masterpiece. But as
he tells Stuart Jeffries, it took a complete breakdown to spur
him to write it Christopher Potter Author and former publisher
Christopher Potter at his home in east London. Photograph:
Martin Argles/Guardian  Christopher Potter was at the peak of
his career when it all went wrong. "I had a huge salary, I had
an apartment in New York, a house in London, and an enviable,
creative job. But almost every day I was having to excuse myself
from meetings because I had the most dreadful panic attacks. I
went to hospital twice because I thought I was having a heart
attack."  Potter was a senior publisher at Fourth Estate,
perhaps Britain's most innovative and successful independent
publishing house of the 1980s and 90s, celebrated for
discovering so-called "sleepers" and transforming them into
bestsellers.  At one point, Potter recalls happily, Fourth
Estate held the top three places in the Sunday