Biography
I was born in Hong Kong in 1955 and had a peripatetic childhood as one of five children of an army officer. I went to Ellerslie School in Great Malvern from 1966–73, then to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford: I graduated in Experimental Psychology in 1976.
I worked briefly for a science publisher before joining New Scientist magazine as a section editor. Soon afterwards I began to present science programmes on BBC Radio 4.
I married David Long in 1981. We settled in Oxford, and our sons Ed and Will were born in 1982 and 1985. Since then I have worked mostly as a freelance writer, editor and broadcaster. From 2000–2007 I edited the Oxford University alumni magazine, Oxford Today.
Inspired by her life and career as Britain's only female Nobel prizewinning scientist, I wrote a biography of Dorothy Hodgkin that came out in 1998. Since then I have had three further Books published and am working on a fifth: Rough Magic is an account of science and scientists in the time of William Shakespeare, and will be published by Bloomsbury eventually.
