I’ve always loved writing. During my academic career, I edited and contributed to numerous medical textbooks, notably the Textbook of Diabetes and Handbook of Diabetes (both edited with John Pickup), Obesity: science to practice (edited with Gema Frühbeck), and the chapter on diabetes in The Oxford Textbook of Medicine.

 

My real writing career began during a year’s sabbatical leave in 2009, with a book about  the history of smallpox and vaccination – well outside my previous comfort zone, but hugely rewarding. I've followed this up with books about various subjects in the history of medicine and science, the only common factor being that they are all powerful stories which fascinated me enough to sit down and try to pass on that fascination to others.

 

Next came a history of polio, followed an exploration of what inspired people to hunt for the Loch Ness Monster. My fourth book was about the 'lost heroes' who played crucial roles in the race to crack the double helical structure of DNA. Just published (summer 2025) is another story of world-changing scientists whose names are mostly forgotten: the handful of British physicists without whom there would have no Manhattan Project, no Los Alamos and no atomic bombs during the Second World War.