Side Projects
Things I pursue outside the lab. For now, that mostly means a quiet obsession with old books.
A Living Inheritance
I collect nineteenth- and early twentieth-century naturalist books, mostly by unknown writers, often modest in binding but rich in voice. The science is not always right, but that is not why I read them. These authors watched closely and let themselves be astonished, and they wrote as participants in the living systems they described rather than from above them. It is a habit of mind I think we have half lost, and the collection is my way of holding onto it. Read the full essay →
In 2026 the collection was shortlisted for the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association National Book Collecting Prize. It did not win, but the shortlist was a thrill.
Ants and their Ways
Rev. W. Farren White · Religious Tract Society, c. 1880s
The heart of the collection. White calls the ants in his garden ‘little people’, and follows them with real tenderness. Bought after a long afternoon on the natural history shelves of a St Andrews bookshop.
British Butterflies, Moths and Beetles
W. F. Kirby · The Young Collector, 1887
A shilling’s worth of encouragement to get outdoors and start naming things. A previous owner marked their finds in purple pencil.
Bramble-Bees and Others
J. Henri Fabre · 1919
Fabre watched single insects for hours until a pattern surfaced. A bridge between Victorian natural history and modern behavioural ecology.
Bumblebees and their Ways
Otto Emil Plath · Macmillan, 1934
Carries a stamp from the Zoology Department here at St Andrews, which makes this copy feel oddly like it came home.
The Life of the Bee
Maurice Maeterlinck · 1901
Natural history turned to philosophy, in a green binding stamped with bees. Inscribed as a gift on 20th December 1901.
The Natural History of Aquatic Insects
L. C. Miall · 1902
Once belonged to the University Library in Dundee, withdrawn and rescued. Its institutional life is part of its charm.
Also on the shelves
- The Hunting Wasp — John Crompton, 1948
- The Charm of Birds — Viscount Grey of Fallodon, 1927
- Wild Birds in Britain — Seton Gordon, 1938
- The Golden Eagle — Seton Gordon, 1955
- British Nesting Birds and Their Eggs — 1949
- Birds, Trees and Flowers of the Countryside — 1947
- The Nature Lover’s Recognition Book — Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald, 1956
Still hunting: Flora Danica, a volume of Humboldt, and Hamilton's Narrow Roads of Gene Land.
