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I am a science writer, author and broadcaster. I live in Oxford, UK, and write about science and scientists past and present.

Over the years I've covered many topics, mainly in the life sciences, but at the moment I'm fascinated by the lives of scientists and their interactions with the society in which they live. Biography, it seems to me, harnesses people's natural curiosity about the lives of others to tell stories about how science is really done. See my blog for occasional thoughts on science, life and time.

During its 150th anniversary year (2010) I was writer in residence at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, about which I still blog occasionally at Dodology.2010 also saw me branching out in a new direction, as a playwright. Hidden Glory is a one-woman show based on the words of Dorothy Hodgkin, Britain's only female Nobel prizewinner for science, commissioned for her centenary in May 2010, and which toured professionally in the autumn of that year.

My most recent published work is a new souvenir guide for the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Recently published:

A Wonderland of Natural History: A souvenir guide

Oxford University Museum of Natural History, August 2011

Available from the Oxford University online shop.