The Orchid Outlaw Ben Jacob

 I have had an interest in British native orchids for over twenty years and have travelled widely to see these plants.  The title consequently held an irresistable allure.

This is first and foremost a very good read.  It can be enjoyed simply because Ben tells a good tale.  There is more however and the book gives us some interestinhg historical content, it enlightens us on some legal matters and it shows how environmental protections often fall well short of what we expect of them.

Ben is an outlaw but one with laudable motives.  He transgresses the law in digging up orchids that he knows are about to be destroyed in a way that does not beak the law.  He tells us that environmental impact assessments which are required before construction projects can proceed are often inadequate; they can fail to identify the presence of orchids simply because they are hard to detect and would need to be searched for at restricted times of the year and with great diligence. 

The breeding biology of orchids is complex and differs in many ways from most other vascular plants.  Having read this book I now understand aspects of orchid anatomy and physiology that were never clear to me before.  We all know that Darwin was a remarkable scientist but I certainly did not know that he studied orchids in great detail and discovered aspects of their cross-polination that were new to me.

Schedule 8 of the Wildlife and Countryside act of 1981 gives greater protection to a select group of plants that includes eleven orchid species but omits some seriously declining species.  Even these species that have enhanced legal protection are left vulnerable as they can be desroyed if their destruction was unforseen - this is quite a get out !

Ultimately this is an inspirational account of one man's mission to save a group of plants that is just one small part of the threatened wildlife of out own country and of the world.

Genomics Step by Step Michael Roberts

 I have dipped into genetics a few times over the years and found the terminology frustratingly opaque.  What is an allele, can we see it ?  There seemed to be elements with names but without clear functions.  Terms such as 'junk DNA' made me suspicious, was it really junk ?  We can see chromosomes but what about genes ?  And how do they sit with chromosomes ?

Increasingly I have read about genetic testing.  I heard that a Siberian Lesser Whitethroat was confirmed as such by sequencing the cytochrome b gene from a feather sample last year; this was a first for my home county of Cumbria.  But why that gene ?

A search online produed a lucky find.  This book was published in 2025.

The field of genomics (so called because it deals with the entire sequencing of base pairs rather than looking simply at genes) is advancing fast.  It has grown alongside IT improvements as it relies heavily on data analysis.

The book is arranged in chapters and while the author tells us that we can dip in at any point, I think a systematic work through is essential.  This is particularly so for readers without a good grounding in contemporary genomics.

It is very systematically layed out, it's not chatty, there are no anecdotes but is is very clear.  The groundwork is layed out in advance of the more complex aspects such as medical applications and ethical implications.

One thing that has always puzzled me is that the human genome project was completed in 2003.  But whose genome was sequenced ?  There is no single genome as we are all genetically different.  Well, it turns out that the first genome to be fully sequenced was that of James Watson a few years later.  Yes, that same Watson who discovered the double helix along with Francis Crick.

Another interesting revelation is around that of the formerly named 'junk DNA'.  Unsurprisingly, this is no junk; it influences the expression of genes.  It turns genes on and of and amplifies and supresses them.  This is an absolutely vital function.  So many conundrums become clear.  This is not to say that everything is now understood.  Michael Roberts makes it very clear that cetain elements and functions are still not fully understood.

I now understand that a gene is a discreet section of a chromosome, it has a start point and an end stop along the chain of DNA that is the double helix.

It is all so elegant and the book explains that elegance with great simplicity.

The Alice Roberts Trilogy: Ancestors, Buried and Crypt

 I picked up a copy of Crypt in the excellent Cogito Books in Hexham without realising that it was the final part of a Trilogy.  I had never read any of her work previously  but I liked it so much that I bought the other two books.  So effictively I travelled back in history rather than starting with prehistoric times; that was a completely fine way to explore these three time periods.  History certainly does not need to be treated sequentially as each period relates to what came before and what followed from its own perspective.

This volume deals with the period from 1000 CE to 1500 CE.  Alice's background is an interesting one; she studies medicine and had a short career in that before teaching anatomy in a medical school setting and then moving on to archeology and now has a specialism in biological anthropology.  This is effectively a melding of the expertise acquired through the succession of her careers.

The threads of genetics (and more particularly and currently genomics), osteo anatomy and microbiology run through the book and these I found particularly fascinating.  Archeology, particularly in its contemporary form that uses very recent scientific tools creates hard evidence that adds to the history that we understand from written commentators who may not be entirely objective or accurate.  She describes how these current scientific tools can be used to confirm or refute medical diagnoses from this mediaeval period when diagnoses had to be made on the basis of symptoms and signs alone when medical knowledge was primitive and biased by unhelpful influences.  So we see the hard evidence from the archeology coming up against the written record on many occasions.

The writing style is very easy and Alice uses contemporary turns of phrase in a very measured way; it is on the one hand chatty but also very authoratative.  She builds in a nice touch of humour that adds a lot to the appeal.  It left me feeling that I would very much like her as a person; this is something that we already know of course from her television appearances.

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The next volume that I read was Buried, partly because it dropped through my letterbox next and partly as it involved moving back through history.

This deals with the first millenium in Britain.  It gives fresh insights into how people lived in the Roman period and that which followed.  What comes through quite strongly is a thread of elitism that followed the departure of the Romans as Britain entered the early mediaeval period.

Again current scientific methods are discussed and amazing as the way that DNA can give us answers about contemporary questions, it is even more amazing the ancient DNA (aDNA) can be retreived and sequenced from skeletons dating back to this period.  I was fascinated by the way that it is sourced from the petrous temporal bone that lies in the base of the skull - words that hark back to my student days !  Not only does Alice describe aDNA from skeletons but DNA from bacteria such as Yersinia pestis the bacterium causing plague can be identified.

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The final volume that I read, the first volume  in the series deals with the prehistoric period, going backwards in time from 0 CE.  This is Ancestors.

The anecdotal style creates a personal atmosphere within which the hard facts sit comfortably.  For example "We're in the Crick Institute. It's like a cathedral this place. Or a monastery. ".

The old debate as to whether the spread of ancient cultures resulted from the spread of ideas or from the movement of populations is being resolved through genomic studies and other recent scientific processes such as stable isotope analyses which can reveal which geographical area came from: teeth provide useful evidence as the apatite crystals in the enamel contain markers indicating regions of origin.

Close examination of bones has revealed what happened to an individual not only in life but also after death.  And some macabre conclusions are reached !

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In summary, these have all been a wonderful read with rigorous scientific detail wrapped up in a very accessibale package.