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In which we build the perfect scientist

Posted on 22 March 2026 by Jennifer Rohn

The work universe bubble at home

They say it takes a village to raise a child. But I’ve been wondering recently what it takes to raise an independent scientist. Specifically, I’m thinking of the ‘valley of death’ between a postdoc and a well-functioning group leader with a team.

A former senior colleague once likened the transition from the former to the latter as “escape velocity”: the difference between milling around on the launchpad with too much fuel (ambition/ideas) and not enough hardware (the rocket ship and crew that will actual propel you into a stable orbit). It’s a brilliant metaphor, which he presented to me after the disappointing news that my major fellowship interview had not been successful.

At that moment, more than a decade ago now, I was despondent, on temporary contracts and about to enter into a massive teaching commitment to earn my keep at the university – a teaching commitment that I still bear. Although it was a long time ago, I still recall the mix of emotions: relieved that at least I could carry on taking home an academic salary and trying to grow my lab, but wondering how on earth I would manage to succeed with such little protected research time – research time I had to actively buy out from my multiple grants, all stitched together to create a day or two a week.

Fast forward to now, and the good news is that everything turned out for me. Against the odds, I managed to craft enough competitive grant funding to secure my salary and to hire a sizeable team long-term. I’ve maintained a group of between 5-7 people ever since, alongside my own salary buyout, through a combination of very hard work and not a little luck. Collaborations turned out to be key: when I stopped acting like a lone wolf and started seeking our like-minded individuals, more opportunities opened up. Today, I operate within a small but close-knit group of collaborators who share my values, interests and (unexpectedly importantly) sense of humour and fun*, and who also embody a Venn diagram of complementary and unique skill sets.

(*One of my colleagues, who I consider especially wise, once told me that they had long ago resolved never to work with people who did not bring them joy or could not share a laugh. I promptly adopted this as my new mantra and have never looked back. Life is, frankly, too short to work with assholes. These I have shed with the utmost relish.)

I am now privileged to act as a mentor to more junior scientists who are where I was a decade or so ago. They, too, often feel despondent and pessimistic about their chances. Sometimes, like I did, they think about bailing out of the profession altogether.

I, personally, have done the experiment. It’s rather inferior to a randomised control trial, as there is no “control me” who took alternative paths. Instead the study design is what is known as a longitudinal “crossover”: I have been a scientist, and left research for publishing, and returned. It is not perfect, but I know that when I clipped my wings and tried to bow out of science, I had a more stable life, but I was ultimately unhappy. And I quite soon realised that I had made a grave mistake. Returning to research made my life more difficult in some ways, but also, overwhelmingly, more fulfilling and happy.

Revisiting the original question, what does it takes to raise an independent scientist? I think the most important thing has less to do with intellect and resilience, and more to do with home environment. Succeeding at academia is very difficult if you do not have a supportive home life and good work-life balance. I have been blessed with a family who understands my need to travel and to work hard. Although I sometimes feel guilty when I have to fly away, work late or spend time on my computer on the weekends, this guilt is entirely self-inflicted: nobody ever makes me feel that I am not doing enough, and we have wonderful experiences working around my constraints. I even have time to pursue my hobbies, albeit on a rather restricted schedule: making music, learning languages, writing, sketching, ham radio, gardening. As a result, my home life is grounded and fulfilling, yet I still manage to get everything done.

But it’s not just about a permissive and supportive home life. None of this would be possible without the lab team behind me. The more senior members look after the more junior members, and all of them keep the lab running effortlessly without me needing to intervene, or sometimes even to think about it. The older members hand over to the newer ones to ensure continuity. For this, I am eternally grateful: a village, indeed.

There is, of course, a gap between the “team of one” and the fully functional team that even the most supportive family or home life cannot bridge. For this, only the luck of a few successful grants can really fill that gap, rewarding you with the team who will shoulder the quotidian load and free yourself for more advanced tasks like publishing papers and dreaming up more grants.

Escape velocity.

And the secret formula? Engaging with collaborators and submitting as many grants as humanly possible – meaning that for a time (months? years?) your own work-life balance will invariably suffer.

Whether it is ultimately worth it depends on the outcome, and the temperament of the individual in the midst of their own particular career experiment. For me, it was: for others, it may not.

Sometimes you just have to do the experiment.

Posted in academia, careers, Domestic bliss, Nostalgia, Research, staring into the abyss, The profession of science, work-life balance | Comments Off on In which we build the perfect scientist

Unintended Consequences

Posted on 15 March 2026 by Athene Donald

We appear to be living in a world currently beset by unintended consequences, or at least a world in which the main proponent does not seem to have thought about the consequences the rest of us now have to live through. In lesser matters, though, unintended consequences may also be rife, including in the pursuit of science and the role of leadership.

I am prompted to write this in part from a musical direction. I recently heard a piece of music I last encountered as a teenager, singing in a choir organised outside of school but run by the school’s music teacher. We were known, back then, as the Carissimi singers and this was a piece written by this very Giacomo Carissimi (ca 1604-74), Jeptha. It tells the biblical tale of a successful, if unwise, leader who, having won some battle, vows to sacrifice the first person he encounters on returning home. Sadly, for him and indeed her, this turns out to be his daughter. Radio 3 played the plangent tones of the final chorus as he laments his loss. Vows like that are dangerous things, but his unintended consequence only wiped out one person, unlike some current actions.

So, let’s scale down again. In our every day lives we may all perform actions that don’t turn out as we intended but are unlikely to lead to actual human sacrifice. Having spent the start of last week at the Royal Society’s conference on Women and the Future of Science (part of their celebrations of 80 years since the first female fellows were elected; I wrote a framing document for it), there was more cause to think about consequences, unintended or otherwise. In several of the sessions there was discussion about leadership, both how one acted as a leader, but also actions that had made a difference to each speaker during their career path. Empathy, support and above all kindness got a lot of air-time; one might wonder if panels of men would have mentioned the same topics, even if they equally identified with them.

It reminded me of one time when I thought I was being kind to a struggling PhD student, only to find that the consequence of that was not all that helpful.I had a student (male) who was writing up their thesis. As was usual in my conversations with students at this stage, I  would set him targets about what I wanted to see from him each week. To start with, every week he turned up empty-handed with plausible explanations why. I wanted to encourage him not deflate or bully him, so I accepted these excuses. Then he asked for longer between meetings, so he had time to complete things. Again, I went along with this. After about 3 months it became clear that this was not the right strategy. Once I pushed him harder, he admitted that he had completely failed to write anything and was in a complete tizz. Once he’d opened up to me, we agreed he should just come each week and talk about how he was, or wasn’t, getting on. That turned him around and in due course he completed the thesis and got his PhD. But I realised that being ‘kind’ had been anything but, as it just left him able to stay in denial about his own progress and leave me in the dark. A lesson learned. But every student is different and needs a ‘personalised’ strategy to get them through what can be a really challenging period.

As a supervisor, a teacher or any kind of mentor means that one’s words can have an effect that may or may not be intended. Again, this past week, we heard of women saying how being told they ‘couldn’t’ do something, or – probably even worse, they weren’t ‘up to’ doing something – pushed some people to stamp their feet and determine to show their interlocutor they were wrong. As a clear example of this, take Rita Colwell (the first woman to lead NSF in the States). In her book, A Lab of One’s Own in response to being told by a professor at Purdue that ‘we don’t waste fellowships on women’, she says:

‘My first reaction is dismay – quickly followed by anger at the injustice of this policy and at his off-handedness in telling me about it…..He seems to think I have no future. Well, I tell myself, I will damn well prove you wrong.’

And she did. That was 1956, but today as then, many people – regardless of gender – may have their hopes apparently dashed by some ‘off-hand’ remark, only for that to spur them on to achieve whatever it is they are apparently being denied. Unintended consequences, but in that framing a positive outcome, sadly not so often true.

As a leader and a mentor one can immediately see that brushing someone off carelessly and without thought, as that professor brushed Colwell off, is not a kind or caring thing to do. The trouble is, there will be people who may be aiming at something beyond their reach and it is necessary to let them down gently. That can also be kind, but it can appear to be quite brutal to the recipient. In reality, and as the panel at last week’s discussion made clear, for those (all women as it happens) who had succeeded, a helping hand, a frank piece of advice, sponsorship and just ‘being there’ as a support were the things that stuck in their mind and coloured their own leadership styles as they rose in seniority.

Business gurus tend to talk about ‘being authentic’ as the right way to lead. But if you are a testy, over-bearing soul being authentic may be very destructive for those around you. The mantra, I believe, means don’t be afraid to show your own weaknesses – perhaps you’re tired having spent the weekend visiting your elderly parents 200 miles away, or are struggling with PTSD or whatever upset is occupying your mind – but too many people may want to deny they have any weaknesses at all. In which case being authentic may lead to yet more unintended consequences, as an exhortation to a team to strive harder may come across as bullying and lead to resignations. I prefer the encouraging words that Ijeoma Uchegbu, spoke last week, having experienced this herself when junior, that it is ‘always important to show empathy and kindness.’  We should all remember these words. Who knows who we will inspire or encourage to progress and who will thereby go on to make the most of their potential.

Posted in empathy, Ijeoma Uchegbu, Rita Colwell, Science Culture | Comments Off on Unintended Consequences

The Internet is Made of Cats

Posted on 12 March 2026 by Henry Gee

Nowadays most people have the computing power in their pockets to summon, at will, the entirety of human knowledge, but, people being people, they use it to have arguments with complete strangers and post pictures of their cats. I have got over the tendency to the first impulse, but am still in thrall to the second, and with that in mind I celebrate, with this post, the recent 16th birthdays of Ted (on the left) and Elvis (on the right), brothers and littermates, who joined the menagerie in the Spring of 2010.

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They came to us from a rather ramshackle establishment points east of Kings Lynn and were sold to us as girl cats. A subsequent visit revealed that they had fleas, worms, lice and testicles, all of which were humanely removed at a price. Here they are not long after their arrival:

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Since then they have become the most sociable and affectionate cats imaginable. Although retired from outdoor pursuits (Elvis tends to forget where he is), Ted adds his great intellect to mine when I am reading heavy scientific tomes, and Elvis is Mrs Gee’s Diabetes Support Cat, alerting her to high blood sugars by sitting on her head and purring. We attribute their sociability to having been raised by Heidi, our late Golden Retriever, who acted as Nanny/Climbing Frame/Playmate for the then-new arrivals. Here they are sitting for a family portrait.

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There’s Always Another Forgotten Woman

Posted on 8 March 2026 by Athene Donald

It’s International Women’s Day and across the internet many stories will be spreading of amazing women – in science and in many other arenas – who either don’t, or haven’t, got the attention they deserve. The Royal Society is continuing its celebration of 80 years since the first women were elected FRS, as my previous blog alludes to, with a two-day conference this coming week. Additionally, a map is being constructed by them to identify locations associated with women in the history of STEM, to which anyone can add. There are the obvious names – Dorothy Hodgkin, Florence Nightingale, Ada Lovelace, all associated with London – appearing on this map, but it is time some of the less familiar ones got attention, and with a far wider geographic distribution. Many more names are appearing in stories and anecdotes on the web, of women whose contributions have been overlooked or claimed under the name of some man (the so-called Matilda Effect).

This year on IWD, I want to write about Ida Freund. In one sense I have known about her all my adult life, since I was awarded an Ida Freund Prize from Girton College as an undergraduate. Did I think about who she was? Not at all, women from the past held no interest for me at 20, I had my own life to worry about then. But, having just re-encountered her name, I realise what an interesting woman she was. Not just a woman in science at a time when that was rare, but also a foreign emigrée who had had a leg amputated in childhood, so someone living with a significant disability. Much more of a teacher than a researcher, she made significant impact on chemistry teaching in Cambridge and more widely.

Ida_Freund

Ida Freund (1863-1914) was born in Austria and came over to England in 1881 after the deaths of both her mother and grandmother, to be with her uncle as guardian. At the time, women’s education was still a contentious issue, but Girton College had been founded as a woman’s college in 1869 (and moved from Hitchin to its current location just outside Cambridge a few years later)  and she was enrolled there. Accounts imply she didn’t want to do this, although no explanation of why is given, but she obviously thrived there and went on to the Cambridge Training College for Women (now Hughes Hall) as a lecturer. From there she moved on to Newnham College where she spent the rest of her life, teaching chemistry to generations of students.

In those days, women were often excluded from the main university lectures (the male lecturers had to agree to their attendance) and the practical work for the women had to be done at Newnham, where a laboratory was created over which she ‘reigned supreme’. (I believe the Girton students also attended.) Women were allowed to sit the same exams as their male counterparts, but their names and classes were posted on a separate list and they were not allowed formally to proceed to degrees, thereby being denied the right to put BA after their name (no one, still, gets a BSc in Cambridge). This situation, it must shamefully be admitted, continued until 1948.

Ida Freund in labThe Newnham Lab in 1912, with Ida Freund sitting

Freund seems to have cut a strange figure. A letter from one of her students described her thus:

‘Miss Freund is the presiding genius, a jolly, stout German, whose clothes are falling in rags off her back. We made lots of horrible smells….’

Another said of her:

‘Miss Freund was a terror to the first-year student with her sharp rebuke for thoughtless mistake. One grew to love her as time went on, though we laughed at her emphatic and odd uses of English. Yet how brave she was trundling her crippled and, I am sure, often painful body about in her invalid chair smiling, urging, scolding us along….’

She never pursued a doctorate, or even very much of her own research, with a total of two papers to her name during her life. Teaching, however, was something she took extremely seriously. Her first textbook (The study of chemical composition: an account of its method and historical development with illustrative quotations) was published in 1904; her second (The experimental basis of chemistry: suggestions for a series of experiments illustrative of the fundamental principles of chemistry) was published posthumously in 1920. Her teaching seems to have been firmly rooted in experiment, but she also – as in her 1904 book – managed to discuss some quite cutting-edge ideas for the time, including sections on the electron (discovered in 1897 in Cambridge by JJ Thomson) and radioactivity (discovered by Henri Becquerel in 1896 in Paris).

The theme of this year’s IWD is Give to Gain. So, what did Ida Freund give and who gained? Firstly, she gave the proceeds of a University Prize she won (the Gamble Prize in 1903 for an essay on the early history of the atomic theory), in part to Girton to create the fund from which I received my prize some seventy years later. There must have been generations of natural science students at the College who likewise benefitted from her generosity. Newnham also has an Ida Freund Memorial Prize. But perhaps there is another lasting legacy of hers we should celebrate her for, with a higher sugar content: periodic table iced cakes/cupcakes. This was a tradition she started, with clear pedagogical intent as well as a light-hearted character. One of her students described this:

‘In my year we were requested to go and make a further study of the ‘Periodic Table of the Elements’: We found a very large board with the Table set out. The division across and down were made with Edinburgh Rock, numbers were made of chocolate, and the elements were iced cakes each showing its name and atomic weight in icing. The nonvalent atoms were round, univalent had a protruding corner, bivalent two, trivalent triangular, and so on . We divided it up between us!’

Periodic Table cupcakes are of course still to be found in some locations with a chemical bent on celebratory occasions.

So, an early teacher of women chemists, who themselves no doubt trained many other women to go on and teach (or research) and who contributed to successive generations through her generosity. Certainly one of the many less well-known women who deserve to be remembered on this day, as on every other. Let us not forget those who forged a path for others of us to follow.

My sources for this blogpost, beyond Wikipedia, come from Chemistry was their Life, Marylene and Geoff Rayner-Canham, Imperial College Press 2008; and Ida Freund – Pioneer in Women’s Education in Chemistry, Margaret Hill and Alan Dronsfield, Education in Chemistry 2004 https://edu.rsc.org/download?ac=133519

Posted in Girton College, Ida Freund, Newnham College, periodic table, Women in science | Comments Off on There’s Always Another Forgotten Woman

In which we’ve lost the scientific argument

Posted on 7 March 2026 by Jennifer Rohn

Montage of the 2010 Science is Vital rally

From the archives: Science is Vital rally, London 2010 (RIP Colin Blakemore, being interviewed with me in the lower left panel) Most photos by Joe Dunckley

Today in the United States, researchers are marching in Washington DC and across the country in a Stand Up for Science National Day of Action. Their problems are admittedly a lot heavier than ours here in the UK, although a friend emailed yesterday musing whether something like Science Is Vital, the street rally and affiliated political activities I co-founded back in 2010, might be needed to protest the recent clumsy funding pause enacted by the UK Research Councils.

Sometimes I’m surprised people even remember Science Vital. But scientists marching in the streets, so commonplace now, was actually rather a rare thing back then. So perhaps it did stick in the mind.

I messaged back that maybe so, but it was definitely a younger person’s game. Besides, things have changed so drastically in the world in the meantime that the whole endeavour now feels rather quaint.

A decade ago, in my frequent university science communication lectures, I’d talk passionately about the need for scientists to connect with the public, to engage in dialogue, be open and transparent about how their work could help make the world a better place. Now (as recently as last week), I stand in front of the undergraduates – many glued to their phones as I speak – and admit that, actually, there no longer seems much point.

How can anything I say counteract the toxic deluge of misinformation that firehoses us on a daily basis? Politicians can look the camera in the eye and tell us that black is white, with absolutely no repercussions. A Health Secretary in one of the most powerful nations on earth can proclaim that vaccines cause harm, and peddle unproved snake-oil alternatives while preventable childhood diseases sweep through the land.

How can one well-meaning scientist counter that? Or even a million? The other side is bankrolled by dead-eyed billionaires.

So yes, it seems I’ve grown cynical in my old age. Having lost the rational argument against a bunch of grifters, we may now be beyond the point of no return. The pendulum will one day swing back, of course, but perhaps not in my lifetime.

In the meantime, ask the earnest undergrads in the front row who are actually paying attention, what can we do?

What, indeed?

Posted in Nostalgia, Policy, Politics, Science Is Vital, Science talking, students, Teaching | Comments Off on In which we’ve lost the scientific argument

Intimations of Mortality

Posted on 5 March 2026 by Henry Gee

Less than a week after the death of my friend, the palaeontologist Hans-Dieter Sues, I learn today that another friend, the zoologist Alan Wilson, has also passed. Hans died at home  — peacefully, but unexpectedly. He was 70. Alan died in a plane crash in Namibia. It is possible, even likely, that he was the pilot — and as far as I can tell from the pictures it was a plane he’d built himself. He was 62. Hans was a few years older than I am. Alan, a year younger.

So, my friends, seize the day. Don’t put off that project. That thing you wanted to do but keep postponing. Tell those you love how much. And hug your dog (other pets may be available). Do it every day. You never know, it may be your last.

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Blue Suede Shoes

Posted on 2 March 2026 by rpg

I’d washed the car for the occasion, but it rained again on Friday, liquefying the mud that had started to dry in the potholes, so that by the time I got to Lincoln I wondered why I’d bothered.

The day was grey with the drizzle interrupted only by periods of actual rain, and the cloudbase persistently low. There would be no Red Arrows; it wasn’t a day for flying.

I’d bought a silk RAF tie to go with the black suit; a purple rose in my buttonhole.

The funeral director told me where to stand, and then my Uncle John came over.

“Nobody told me… I want to carry, too.”

Then Uncle Bill walked up. “Yes. Me too.”

The director began his briefing again.

“When the casket comes out you put your hands here—” he said.

“No,” said Bill, “It’s not the ‘casket’. It’s our brother.” I nodded.

Then,

“Thank you,” and dad came out of the hearse, for the last leg of his final journey. We held him, then lifted him onto our shoulders.

Bill and I linked arms; John was front right, with the only professional pallbearer in front of me.

“Thank you,” again, then, “Left, right, left… good.”

We lowered him onto the catafalque—Bill is the tallest of all of us, so I had to take most of the weight for a moment, but we managed the job smoothly enough: the funeral director commended us at least three times for doing a good job. Writing this, I’ve suddenly realized why my right wrist—injured a month ago—suddenly is hurting again.

I found a place between my daughters on the front row, picked up the order of service. We sang I Vow to Thee My Country—at least, some voices were piped and some of the mourners sang; every time I opened my mouth to try to form words I cried and nothing more would come out.

Afterwards, I ran to fetch my umbrella, and sheltered mam as she leaned on my arm back to to my sister’s car. We drove past the Bomber Command memorial and into Waddington for the wake. Brown food and poor beer. But it was good to reconnect with my uncles, at least.

Then the long drive home, raining most of the way but with a brightening of the sky as I approached North Weald.

There were no Red Arrows on Friday. But they will fly again.

Bye, dad.

 

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Looking Back, Moving Forward

Posted on 2 March 2026 by Athene Donald

This post is crossposted from the Royal Society’s own blog, appearing on March 2nd 2026.

From March 2025 to March 2026, The Royal Society has been commemorating the 80th anniversary of the election of the first women Fellows and honouring the achievements of women in STEM.

In 1945 the Royal Society finally admitted its first female Fellows: the crystallographer Kathleen Lonsdale and the biochemist Marjory Stephenson. It had taken quite a while to reach this point after the first woman was nominated in 1902.  That was Hertha Ayrton, whose nomination was thrown out on the grounds that she was a married woman and therefore had no standing under the legal system of the time. However, even after the passing of the 1919 Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act, there was no immediate move to nominate other women. It took until 1943 for this subject to be seriously revisited, leading (after the Fellowship had been consulted, of course all men) to the election of these first two trail-blazing women in 1945.

Since then, the number of women in the Fellowship has slowly grown to its present percentage of around 14%. That is still a disappointingly low proportion, but looking at the rate of recent elections it can be seen that, averaging over the past five years, the percentage of women elected each year has been 27.6% to the Fellowship and 29.4% to Foreign Membership. Not yet good, not yet anywhere near parity, but a healthy increase. Sadly, these things take time and in many of the disciplines within the Royal Society’s remit, the pool of senior women who could be nominated also remains stubbornly low and well below 50%.

So, what needs to be done now, after 80 years of slow progression? There is a fundamental problem about the pipeline of female talent starting out. This is particularly acute in my field of the physical sciences.

The message conveyed to too many girls and young women is that subjects like computing, engineering or physics are not for them.  We need to counter this at all levels of society, but change has to start within the school environment.  . Everyone has a part to play in countering such unhelpful stereotypes, and demonstrating that everyone is welcome within the scientific community across all disciplines.

Talent needs to be celebrated wherever it is found, regardless of sex, skin colour or socioeconomic status.  The Royal Society, as an institutionhas to ensure it that principle: be it in the portraiture on its walls or the prizes it awards; the composition of its committees or its fellowships at every stage. .

Only then will the Royal Society be fully representative of the scientific population, ready to do its best for the future of science.

Posted in Hertha Ayrton, Kathleen Lonsdale. Margery Stephenson, portraits, Royal Society, Women in science | Comments Off on Looking Back, Moving Forward

In which I ponder: could scientific angst beat nuclear war in a fair fight?

Posted on 1 March 2026 by Jennifer Rohn

When you are a scientist, your daily concerns revolve around mundane issues, so mundane that most normal people would struggle to recognise them as urgent: primarily funding woes, like I wrote about last week. But also publications, teaching, the dozen new academic chores that sprout from the hydra’s bleeding neck each time you finally manage to chop off a head. (This metaphor is brought to you by a recent Bluesky exchange about the surprising goriness of Ancient Greek mythology.)

All this stuff is vital, urgent and ever-pressing to me in my little academic bubble. It feels, sometimes, like the most important thing in the world. And it can consume all of my emotional energy, until my tank is empty.

But there is a bigger world out there, beyond the lab. Most scientists I know are interested in many other topics: art, music, film, sport, theatre, literature. And politics – especially politics. Like me, they tend to list to the left on most issues, though of course not universally.

As I write, two countries with hefty nuclear arsenals are in the process of poking a lion with a very large pointy stick. A lion with a lot of powerful friends.

Perhaps some of us will shrug and think, well, nothing truly bad will come of it. After all, the pointy stick has been deployed many times over the past few months.

As a scientist, I can’t help wondering how we have all become so inured to violence – so inured that we forget that violence might well lead to serious consequences. We witness on our news feeds those rogue states (you know who you are) killing and bombing with limited oversight, so frequently that it sometimes does not seem as urgent as this grant, that scientific manuscript revision. It is so commonplace that some forget about cause and effect, in a way that people, like me, who grew up during the Cold War (think, existential dread punctuated by nuclear attack drills in school) never fully can.

But we do forget, as a society. We forget about the Butterfly Effect. We learned in school that World War I was catalysed by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. This event seems, today, almost quaint, that something so small could have led to something so catastrophic. Arguably, the person assassinated today was a hundred times more consequential. Yet surely these days we are buffered by so much news, by so much going on at once, so many small, daily insults, that one isolated act couldn’t really push us over the edge.

But what if, actually, it could?

It’s safe to assume that if the unthinkable does happen, the scholarly pursuit of science will be the first thing to grind to a halt.

And if this happens, it’s these funding and publication worries that will seem quaint, in the grand scheme of things.

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What I Read In January and February

Posted on 28 February 2026 by Henry Gee

If my three regular readers noticed the absence of my usual monthly book blog, they did not see fit to remind me. If any apology is necessary, I have been very busy elsewhere, promoting The Wonder of Life on Earth; getting ready for the imminent release in paperback of The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire; working hard at the day job (by day I’m with the Submerged Log Company); and also developing a synopsis for what I hope will be my next book, working title The Taylor Swift Diet Workout. On occasion I have wondered why I continue this blog, as nobody reads it, except me, and, arguably, God.  I am wondering if blogs are old hat, and I should reinvent myself as a substack, if I could only think of it as anything other than a variety of club sandwich.

But I digress.

Given that I spend much of the day staring at text for a living, it takes a lot for me to stare at more text for pleasure, even if I had the time. So I listen to audiobooks. especially during the hour or so each day when my dogs drag me out for a walk. Only two of the seven six seven titles below appeared before mes yeux as print on paper. The rest were imbibed via mes oreilles. So here goes.

Mark Gattiss: The Man In Black The Complete Series 1-4. Mark Gattiss is a gifted writer, actor and connoisseur of old-fashioned horror stories. Here he is the sinister compere of a number of radio dramas mainly set in modern times and I suspect originally broadcast on the wireless. None of them really did it for me, but I suspect that what with all the alpha-male shouting and female shrieking (the misogyny of some of these stories does tend to wear thin rather quickly), these tales are best listened to in small doses. I also listened to a precursor of this, a series called Fear on 4, in which the compere was Edward De Souza, which was rather similar but also dredged up some of the old classics including one of my favourites, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, narrated by Anna Massey, which was a treat.

Steve Brusatte: The Story of Birds Following his books on dinosaurs and mammals, the man known affectionately chez Gee as ‘Dinosaur Steve’ has written this page-turner on the amazing and improbable story of the evolution of birds. Bird evolution is a hot issue in science right now so it’s great to have an up-to-the-minute popular account, written with Brusatte’s usual brio. DISCLAIMER: Steve is a personal friend and the publisher sent me a pre-release copy for a puff quote. It’s published in June.

John Le Carre The Spy Who Came In From The Cold Having become rather fond of Mick Herron’s Slough House spy thrillers last year, I sought to imbibe directly from the fountainhead. Set in the early 1960s very depths of the Cold War, veteran spy Alec Leamas poses as a defector to East Germany in order to infiltrate the East German apparatus and murder their brutal spymaster Hans-Dieter Mundt, who is apparently responsible for killing several British agents. While still in the UK Leamas forms a relationship with Liz Gold, a young British communist idealist, who also finds herself in East Germany as part of a Communist Party exchange mission. I won’t say more for fear of spoiling the labyrinthine plot, except to contrast Liz’s naive idealism with the pragmatism of Leamas and his handler, the self-effacing spymaster George Smiley and especially Smiley’s boss, the mysterious Control, through whose character we see that the methods used by Western and Eastern secret services are equally horrible. Excellent, if somewhat dispiriting.

John Le Carre Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy Here the action takes place  in 1973. Control is dead, Smiley has retired, and the Secret Intelligence Service is in a state of collapse. Karla, the Soviet spymaster, has broken every British spy-ring behind the Iron Curtain. Suspecting a mole at the heart of the Service, Smiley is brought out of retirement to plug the leak. The discovery has devastating consequences for all concerned, Smiley not the least.

David Mitchell Number 9 Dream This is an author whose works defy categorisation, though if I were forced to try, they would be fantasy. I have enjoyed two so far – The Cloud Atlas, and The Bone Clocks. Number 9 Dream is set entirely in contemporary Japan, and concerns Eiji Miyake, a twenty-year-old from an out-of-the-way island, who travels to the Big Bad and Bonkers city of Tokyo in search of the father he has never met. Thoroughly enjoyable, very funny and occasionally ultraviolent (Miyake gets mixed up with the yakuza) it is so intense that I could only manage a few pages at a time. If ever there were a novel that deserved the epithet ‘picaresque’, this is it. Mitchell does love his literary games, and the ‘Number 9’ in the title makes its appearance in several forms, either as nine, or 333, or in other ways. Loved it? I pitched headfirst into my ramen.

John Le Carre The Honourable Schoolboy This is the second novel (after Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) in the so-called ‘Karla’ series, but it can be read quite happily in isolation. The mole in the Secret Intelligence Service has been exposed, but at terrible cost: the credibility of the SIS is forever ruined, and the CIA (known as ‘The Cousins’) is muscling in. Everywhere the SIS is in retreat, which comes to the notice of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong, which discovers that the house where the spooks used to inhabit is deserted. One of the journalists is Jerry Westerby, occasional newshound, failed novelist, broke aristocrat (he is the ‘Honourable Schoolboy’ of the title) and undercover SIS agent, who George Smiley brings out of retirement to investigate the business of Hong Kong high-roller Drake Ko, OBE. who seems to be in receipt of a large amount of Soviet money. It also turns out that Ko has underworld connections throughout Southeast Asia — including a very highly placed source in ‘Red’ China that the SIS and the CIA would both love to get their hands on. It’s set just as the Vietnam War is ending, and in many locations — Tuscany, Cambodia (where the Khmer Rouge is in the ascendant), Laos and Thailand, as well as Hong Kong and dismal early 1970s London, and the settings are very evocative. Smiley is once again brought in to sniff out the target, but his relations with the Cousins are nearly as problematic as those with the erratic Westerby, the result being somewhat mixed. I’ve been listening to all the Smiley novels narrated by Simon Russell Beale, and they are a joy, making sense of an occasionally dense and over-elaborate style, transforming what might have been a hard read into an immersive experience. The Honourable Schoolboy is the best so far, nd I’d be surprised if it doesn’t make my end-of-year list.

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