John Burdon Sanderson Haldane F.R.S. (1892–1964) was one of the leading scientists of the twentieth century, renowned for helping, through statistical wizardry, to reconcile Darwin’s theory of natural selection with Mendel’s discovery of genes. The product of a distinguished family of scientists and public figures, “JBS” trained and influenced a swathe of students and colleagues at Oxford, Cambridge, and University College London, many of whom, such as the evolutionary theorist John Maynard Smith, went on to distinction in their own right. As a widely known left-wing “public intellectual,” Haldane gained fame as a popularizer of science and commentator on public affairs, broadcasting often on the BBC and publishing extensively in newspapers and magazines. His collections of popular scientific essays influenced a generation of upcoming scientists and remain in print today. On his death in 1964, he was accorded the rare tribute of a televised self-obituary on the BBC. Celebrated for his ability to connect seemingly disparate subjects, during the Second World War Haldane was extensively involved in scientific research to aid the British war effort. Using evidence gathered from VENONA Signals Intelligence intercepts, MI5 files, and the Haldane papers, this book reveals that Haldane was also a Soviet spy—a member of the “X Group,” an espionage ring that was run out of the Soviet Embassy in London. His interlocking associations with other spies, such as Ivor Montagu and Hans Kahle; his role as a hardline Stalinist propagandist through the onset of the Cold War; his betrayal of his colleague and friend, the Soviet geneticist Nikolai Vavilov; his long-standing support for the charlatan Soviet “scientist” Trofim D. Lysenko; and his concealed stalemate with the Communist Party of Great Britain once his ability to finesse Lysenko was extinguished, are unraveled here for the first time.

One of the Wall Street Journal's 10 Best Books of 2020 One of the New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2020 A biography of J. B. S. Haldane, the brilliant and eccentric British scientist whose innovative predictions inspired Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. J. B. S. Haldane’s life was rich and strange, never short on genius or drama—from his boyhood apprenticeship to his scientist father, who first instilled in him a devotion to the scientific method; to his time in the trenches during the First World War, where he wrote his first scientific paper; to his numerous experiments on himself, including inhaling dangerous levels of carbon dioxide and drinking hydrochloric acid; to his clandestine research for the British Admiralty during the Second World War. He is best remembered as a geneticist who revolutionized our understanding of evolution, but his peers hailed him as a polymath. One student called him “the last man who might know all there was to be known.” He foresaw in vitro fertilization, peak oil, and the hydrogen fuel cell, and his contributions ranged over physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, mathematics, and biostatistics. He was also a staunch Communist, which led him to Spain during the Civil War and sparked suspicions that he was spying for the Soviets. He wrote copiously on science and politics in newspapers and magazines, and he gave speeches in town halls and on the radio—all of which made him, in his day, as famous in Britain as Einstein. It is the duty of scientists to think politically, Haldane believed, and he sought not simply to tell his readers what to think but to show them how to think. Beautifully written and richly detailed, Samanth Subramanian’s A Dominant Character recounts Haldane’s boisterous life and examines the questions he raised about the intersections of genetics and politics—questions that resonate even more urgently today.

The Times hailed Richard Burdon Haldane as ‘one of the most powerful … intellects’ British statesmanship had ever seen. His brother John, a great physiologist, invented the first gas masks used in World War One. Their sister Elizabeth was among the first women to become a senior public servant. Their mother Mary, friend and advisor to top politicians and churchmen, nurtured these exceptional minds. Mary’s grandchildren swapped her traditional roots for radical socialism, but continued the brilliant family legacy. Naomi Mitchison was a doyenne of Scottish literature; one Nobel prizewinner called her brother, the geneticist J.B.S. Haldane, ‘the cleverest man I ever knew’. Like the Darwins and Keyneses, this clan of thinkers lived in rapidly changing times, and helped to remake the world around them. Drawing on extensive family interviews and previously unseen private papers, Serious Mindsdetails scandal, tragedy and achievement within a dynasty that shaped modern Britain–from the welfare state, education system and military, to our understanding of energy, the human body, and the origins of life itself.

The previously classified story of the eccentric researchers who invented cutting-edge underwater science to lead the Allies to D-Day victory In August 1942, more than 7,000 Allied troops rushed the beaches of Normandy, France, in an all but-forgotten landing. Only a small fraction survived unscathed. It was two summers before D-Day, and the Allies realized that they were in dire need of underwater intelligence if they wanted to stand a chance of launching another beach invasion and of winning the war. Led by the controversial biologists J. B. S. Haldane and Dr. Helen Spurway, an ingenious team of ragtag scientists worked out of homemade labs during the London Blitz. Beneath a rain of bombs, they pioneered thrilling advances in underwater reconnaissance through tests done on themselves in painful and potentially fatal experiments. Their discoveries led to the safe use of miniature submarines and breathing apparatuses, which ultimately let the Allies take the beaches of Normandy. Blast injury specialist Dr. Rachel Lance unpacks the harrowing narratives of these experiments while bringing to life the men and women whose brilliance and self-sacrifice shaped the outcome of the war, including their personal relationships with one another and the ways they faced skepticism and danger in their quest to enable Allied troops to breathe underwater. The riveting science leading up to D-Day has been classified for generations, but Chamber Divers finally brings these scientists’ stories—and their heroism—to light.

Over the past fifty years, Nigel West has been involved in almost every espionage-related investigation, breakthrough or revelation that you can think of. His molehunts have led to the unmasking of spies within MI5, MI6 and the CIA and the identification of numerous others – some of whom were crucial to the Allied victory in the Second World War and would have died without any public recognition if not for him. His first encounter with the intelligence community was a lecture given at his school by John le Carré, the guest of a Benedictine monk who had recently retired from MI6. Later, West worked as a researcher for SOE agent Ronnie Seth, who was sentenced to death by the Nazis after being captured during Operation blunderhead, and exposed two of the Cambridge spies recruited by Anthony Blunt. For the fortieth anniversary of the D-Day landings, West traced the double agent codenamed garbo and brought him to London so he could be decorated at Buckingham Palace. As action-packed as the lives of the spies he has written about, this is the story of the most enthralling and significant post-war intelligence revelations as told by Britain's most authoritative writer on espionage and the secret services.

This is a collection of Burtoniana: letters, reminiscences, diary entries, mentions and fugitive pieces, by or about Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890). Although there are many biographies of Burton, none is completely satisfactory, and primary sources are badly needed. While Isabel Burton burned in stages-partly in Trieste, partly in London-almost all of her husband's correspondence, along with his diaries and a number of his manuscripts, she could not burn the letters he had sent to other people. Therefore the letters we now have contain hardly any received by Burton himself, apart from scattered instances where he pasted letters he received into copies of books in his library, or collated them for use in ongoing projects, like the Book of the Sword, which survived Isabel's moral scrutiny. From references in the letters which do survive, it is obvious that Isabel burnt a vast correspondence. The mania for collecting Burtoniana has meant that a lot of the known correspondence is now secreted away in private collections---the auction catalogues are full of examples at ransom-like prices. The scope here is considerably broader than traditional collections of letters, as it includes other documents, and relevant mentions of Burton and his concerns in correspondence between third parties. In this spirit, there is an extensive selection of correspondence between John Hanning Speke, C. P. Rigby, J. A. Grant and others, as well as a large tranche of correspondence by Isabel. Most of the material here has never been published before, or has appeared in fragmented form only, often garbled by transcription errors. Commentary is supplied where necessary to explain obscurities and identify references. A Register is also provided in Volume 3 with more details on the principal figures referred to.

Rupert Darwall’s Green Tyranny traces the alarming origins of the green agenda, revealing how environmental scares have been deployed by our global rivals as a political instrument to contest American power around the world. Drawing on extensive historical and policy analysis, this timely and provocative book offers a lucid history of environmental alarmism and failed policies, explaining how “scientific consensus” is manufactured and abused by politicians with duplicitous motives and totalitarian tendencies.