Matthew Cobb

And Jim was much more left-wing and very supportive, for example, of women in science in the 1960s.

Something happened to him in the 80s and 90s where he changed his mind about a lot of these issues.

And that will be the topic of, not my book, but my good friend Nathaniel Comfort's forthcoming biography of Watson.

And that's the riddle he's got to try and work out the answer to.

And that will be out in a year or so.

Well, he called it the most important book he ever read.

And that's partly what gave me the clue to understanding him as having Edwardian aspects.

So I thought, okay, he said this when he was about 80, that this was the most important book he ever read.

He kept it to the end of his life.

His son Michael now has it, and it's incredibly well-thumbed.

The Cricks had the eight-volume bound edition.

So this is an incredibly successful encyclopedia.

And lots of people I've met since have said, oh, I had that.

My parents bought it.

It went out of fashion about 1960, but it went through many editions.

And I was able to read it online.

And it is extraordinary in its breadth of topics that it covers.

The edition that Francis had was from 1908.

So the gene had barely been mentioned.

barely been named, and there was nothing about heredity or anything like that in the book.