Author, scientist and historian
About
Hello. Thanks for spending some time on my website. I thought I’d tell you a little about myself so you can get an idea about where I’m coming from.
I was lucky to be raised in a family which was interested in both science and the arts, and in a part of outer London where history was all around. We were free to wander around Hampton Court and the royal parks, canoe on the Thames or take the train to explore central London. We were encouraged to be interested in everything!
We visited museums and zoos, kept stick insects and reptiles, built model aircraft, played sports and music, and read as many books as we could. And I developed the ambition to look objectively on the world and try to understand how everything fitted together.
My Background and Research Career
I write non-fiction books with a unique slant because my lifelong obsessions with creatures and engineering led me into a life in academia where I specialised in biomechanics – investigating how organisms are adapted to their physical world. Working with bright and enthusiastic students, I studied topics as diverse as insects and orang-utans; fingernails and flight; and wheat and wood.
Later on I started to become more interested in our relationship with the natural world. I collaborated with town planners to investigate the benefits of urban greenspace, and set out to examine how our ancestors exploited the properties of wood to make and use their tools.
My Teaching and Textbooks
As an academic you are also paid to find out about an even wider range of subjects, simply by having to teach them! Consequently I learnt about the delights of statistics, evolution, biodiversity and ecology. And by having to run numerous laboratory classes, field trips, and residential field courses, I was lucky enough to spend a great deal of time in beautiful places marveling at wonderful creatures. I was determined not to let my teaching go to waste, so I converted many of my courses into textbooks .
My Books
My writing experience set me up to write popular science books about subjects that I was really passionate about. My first was Trees which uncovers the secrets of the lives of these most beautiful and important organisms.
Since I left academia I have also been free to indulge my lifelong interests in history and industrial archaeology by pottering about visiting ancient monuments, country houses and industrial museums. This has helped me ask the broader questions that have always fascinated me. I investigate how science and engineering can enlighten us about the history of our species, our relationship with the natural world and our place in the universe. I have been delighted to find something that I have long suspected: that history makes much more sense than we have been taught; and that understanding the world can be far more fun than the experts have led us to believe.
