The Ingenious Mr Fairchild

Michael Leapman

Editions

Review

Just ask me!  There’s not a lot I don’t know about zero, non-zero, pi, Fermat’s theorem, Mendel’s peas, Mendeleyev’s dream, Babbage’s cogs, cod or coelacanths and frankly I blame that Sobel woman for the rash of books dealing with ‘the facts behind the faces’ (or do I mean ‘the faces behind the facts’?).

So it was with some trepidation that I picked up this volume, another of these ‘little’ books, this time to immerse myself in the horticultural world in London around 1700.

The ingenuity of our eponymous hero took the form of skills in the cultivation of plants, and he is remembered as the man whose primitive form of genetic engineering, when he crossed a Sweet William with a Gillyflower, produced the first man-made hybrid known as Fairchild’s Mule, and so began the process - and the argument, which continues today unabated around GM foods.

In the absence of hard facts the author has given us a vivid picture of the horticultural and scientific world in England and Europe at a time when Sir Isaac Newton still presided over the Royal Societies.

Mr Fairchild proves to be a most engaging companion. - review by Stewart Grimshaw