Most people have received an inheritance, a bequest or legacy of one kind or another. From my grandfather, I have a watch. It’s a small gold fob watch with a cracked glass cover. On the back, an engraving shows that it was a gift to Geoffrey Shakespeare, on the occasion of his winning the parliamentary… Read More from Handed down

“In nature there’s no blemish but the mind: None can be called deformed but the unkind. Virtue is beauty” Twelfth Night I am standing in a damp car park in Gateshead, with a black bin bag bursting with old clothes. I am trying to feed the pieces of clothing into the opening of an Oxfam… Read More from A Dead Man’s Shoes

“The thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” Hamlet How would you feel, if your baby was born disabled? Imagine two healthy parents united in eager anticipation of a wanted child. Imagine a normal pregnancy and an untroubled birth. And then imagine the baby taken away, the doctors conferring, anxiety and confusion followed by… Read More from Pass it on

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” Romeo and Juliet All my life, my name has preceded me. “What a lovely name”, people say, and sometimes I feel like replying: but would you really want to be called Shakespeare? Sometimes, it feels a bit… Read More from Plays, graves and automobiles

“Be not afraid of greatness: some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.” Twelfth Night I pressed the play button to cue the famous scene from the film noir classic To Have And To Have Not. That’s the one where sultry Lauren Bacall asks moody Humphrey Bogart: “You… Read More from Silver spoons and equal chances

“But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison-house I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul” Hamlet It was the pair of lederhosen which first prompted my curiosity. They were folded neatly at the back of the cupboard, unworn for sixty years. We only found them… Read More from The skeleton in the closet

“In sooth, I know not why I am so sad: It wearies me; you say it wearies you But how I caught it, found it or came by it What stuff ‘tis made of, whereof it is born I am to learn; And such a want-wit sadness makes of me That I have much ado… Read More from An Aunt Who Wasn’t There

“O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world That has such people in’t!” The Tempest  Life may be what we make of it, but we can only do a limited amount about its ingredients. Much of who we are and what we do is given to… Read More from Inheritance after genetics

“What’s past is prologue” The Tempest Inheritance concerns biology, but as I have tried to show, it cannot be reduced to biology. DNA can be traced tangibly through the generations, but genetics is ultimately no more than a set of instructions for building proteins. Of infinitely more interest than the genotype is the phenotype –… Read More from Afterword