In my ‘former life’ as a research scientist working on immune mechanisms in invertebrate animals, especially in relation to the parasites they hosted; I edited, wrote, or co-wrote with members of my research team, about 40 research papers and reviews, and book chapters.

Since then, enjoying the freedom of being a freelance writer, I’ve written regular series about science, natural history and countryside matters in the Oxford Times’ Limited Edition magazine, Wellcome Trust’s Science Matters, Cumbria Life, Cumbria, and various ‘one-offs’ for Aesthetica, the Guardian, Writers’ Handbook, Yesterday, D&G Life, Biological Science Reviews, Wellcome History, The Lancet, and more.

Here’s a selection of more recent pieces:

Dark Mountain

The King of the Foorins. (The end of the Great Auks) April 2026. In the anthology A Bestiary, Dark Mountain Issue 29.
This tidal life: the impermanence of colonisation March 2021. Read it here.
Here be dragons April 2014. Read it here.
Sandstone June 2013. Read it here.

The Clearing, Little Toller
Gulls dreaming (and other things gulls do) September 2024. Read it here.
Sand December 2020 (reproduced in the anthology Going to Ground, Little Toller 2024)

Limestone (a lock-down project) 2021
A series of essays on different aspects of ‘limestone country’, from rock armour on the shore to limestone pavements, fossils, ‘hot lime’, kilns (including the huge TATA kilns at Shap), drystone walls and more – all in my Solway Shore-walker blog here.

The art and science of seeing seaweeds
Early collectors, pressed seaweeds, drawings and water colours, early photography, Anna Atkins’ cyanotypes – and more. Read it here.

The Anemonisers of Scotland
After the publication of Seaside Pleasures  I wrote various articles about one of the main characters, the Victorian naturalist Philip Henry Gosse. This piece about Scottish sea-anemones and their collectors was published in Scots Magazine,  May 2006, pp514-516. Read it here.