Eccentric Choices

How is life in a lab where people in the early twentieth century are making hugely significant biological discoveries?

This fictionalized account opens in 1922 with the fourteen-year-old Len La Cour arriving at the John Innes Horticultural Institution, located in an outer London suburb. The institution is directed by Dr Bateson, a pioneer plant geneticist. He appoints Len as technician because he is the only candidate who can spell microscope. Many of the staff are women, owing to the shortage of male scientists following the Great War, and they create a ‘domesticated’ working atmosphere, encouraging each other to follow up on their own ideas rather than those passed down from above. Dr Bateson’s secretary, librarian, and researcher, Caroline Pellew, takes care of Len and helps him engage with other staff, including Cyril Darlington, who makes outstanding discoveries about chromosomes; J. B. S. Haldane, an eminent evolutionist; and the congenitally deaf and dumb Herbert Osterstock, a plant illustrator. Darlington and Haldane both require scientific enemies as work stimuli. A member of the governing body, A. G. Tansley, an ecological pioneer, introduces Freudian psychology to Britain ahead of the medicals. Rose Scott-Moncrieff, working with Haldane, shows that genes determine enzyme activity.

This novel explores the often overlooked or ignored contributions of botanists in the last century, presenting their stories in a fictionalized narrative.