by Greg Mayer

On my visit to England earlier this year, one of my goals was to get a copy of Crick, Matthew’s award-winning biography of Francis Crick, co-proposer of the now well-known double helix structure for DNA. Like Jerry, I prefer the dust jacket of the British edition, and thought it would be fitting to get a copy of the British edition in Britain.

I first looked in the very extensive gift shop of the British Museum. It had many biographies, on a wide range of personages, but relatively few on scientists (or science books in general)– a clerk I queried kindly explained the shop’s offerings.

It did, however, have a fine selection of cat books.

My next try was at the Natural History Museum gift shop, which had a nice book section, but not nearly as large as that at the British Museum, and no Crick.

With the days of our stay running low, my wife and I did a half-day of shopping, and headed to Foyles, which had been recommended to us.

Checking Foyles’ website, the Charing Cross Road shop had copies. The store was a revelation– I have not seen a bookstore like this in the US for many years– I could have spent a lot of time there!

But we were on a quest, so we headed straight to the “Biography” section on the ground floor, but no Crick. A clerk explained to us that if it wasn’t there among the recent biographies, there was a large biography section upstairs. Upstairs, again, no luck. A clerk there, when queried, though, said right away to check the science section, pointing us towards it, and success!

I am not quite done reading it yet, but I have learned much and heartily recommend it. Although but a small part of the story, I was intrigued by Matthew’s account of how the order of authorship was determined for the 4 papers on DNA that Watson and Crick published in 1953-1954.

There were three other items on my list of things to find in London: first, Jerry’s favorite English beer, Timothy Taylor’s Landlord– done!

We got it at the Zetland Arms, not far from the Natural History Museum in South Kensington.

Then, an Everton scarf, which we tried for at Lillywhites, a big sporting goods store off Piccadilly Circus. When my wife said “blue and white scarf” to the clerk, he smiled and said “Chelsea, of course”, but when we explained it was Everton, he said it was 50-50 at best (they had maybe half the Premier League club scarfs), and Everton was among the missing. I thought we were out of luck, but we stopped at the Museum Superstore, a tourist trap souvenir shop two doors down from the British Museum, looking for some tea tins, but my wife emerged from the back of the store with an Everton scarf— qapla’!

I had also been hoping to get a book on British amphibians and reptiles more up to date than my copy of Nick Arnold’s book. There are a few such books, but, alas, neither Foyles nor the Natural History Museum had one. 🙁