Alice Roberts

Alice Roberts describes the books that shaped her life, from childhood favourites such as Frog and Toad to evolutionary works by Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould and Charles Darwin. Reading Dawkins’s The Blind Watchmaker helped her reject the Anglican faith and embrace humanism, while Gould’s approach influenced her own science communication. She also reflects on discovering George Eliot’s Middlemarch later in life and lists current reading spanning Roman religion, artificial intelligence, fiction and humanist philosophy.

Authors and cultural figures appearing at the 2021 Hay Festival recommend books that changed their thinking, creative practice or personal lives. Their choices span fiction, memoir, feminist criticism, Black political writing, science, mental health, technology and poetry. Recurring themes include challenging racism and patriarchy, preserving historical memory, improving mental health, resisting overwork and expanding ideas of human possibility. The recommendations present literature as both a reflection of social change and a force capable of helping bring it about.

Alice Roberts argues that Christmas can be celebrated for scientific and cultural reasons as well as religious ones. She traces the 25 December date through Roman sun worship, Christianity’s rise under Constantine, and earlier pagan midwinter festivals, while examining archaeological evidence from monuments including Newgrange, Maes Howe, Durrington Walls and Stonehenge. The winter solstice’s astronomical significance and the persistence of pre-Christian customs, she concludes, make Christmas or Yule meaningful to believers and non-believers alike.

Five shortlisted museums are championed through personal endorsements from Fiona Shaw, Rory Bremner, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Martin Parr and Alice Roberts. Tate Modern is praised for transforming London’s cultural landscape and making modern art accessible; the National Heritage Centre in Newmarket for combining horseracing history, sporting art, veterinary science and racehorse retraining; John Soane’s Museum for preserving an architect’s immersive total work of art; Hepworth Wakefield for its design, programming and support for photography and contemporary sculpture; and Birmingham’s Lapworth Museum for its major redevelopment, geological collections and expanded public and educational role.

The ancient landscape of the Somerset Levels shows that communities have long adapted to wetlands rather than trying to eliminate them. Although the area has been drained and defended for centuries, repeated flooding and climate change expose the limits of attempts to control nature. Research from the universities of Birmingham and Southampton suggests that restoring forests on floodplains could slow water and reduce downstream flood heights, supporting a shift toward flood protection that works with natural forces.

The evolutionary history of elephants shows that behavioral changes can precede anatomical and genetic adaptations. As ancestral elephants shifted from browsing leaves to grazing on abrasive grass, their tooth structures adapted millions of years later, demonstrating the importance of developmental plasticity and environmental interaction. A similar process may have influenced human evolution, with habitual running potentially preceding related changes in body shape.

The writer reflects on becoming a pescatarian after years of vegetarianism, citing the nutritional benefits of oily fish and the difficulty of maintaining strict ethical distinctions between animals. The World Health Organization’s review of more than 800 studies classified processed meat as carcinogenic and unprocessed red meat as probably carcinogenic, while emphasizing that these categories describe the strength of evidence rather than the size of the risk. Eating 50g of processed meat daily is associated with an estimated 18% increase in colorectal cancer risk, although the overall death toll remains far below that associated with smoking or alcohol.

Autumn leaves are predominantly yellow in Europe but much redder in North America and East Asia. Yellow often results from chlorophyll breaking down and revealing existing pigments, while red anthocyanins are newly produced. Their evolution may reflect several functions, including protection from sunlight, antifungal activity, and defenses against leaf-eating insects. The global pattern also suggests that ancient tree lineages and long-extinct herbivores shaped the persistence of red autumn foliage, alongside local climate and leaf physiology.

The Snettisham hoard, including more than 200 gold, silver and bronze torcs, demonstrates the artistic skill and technical sophistication of Iron Age Celtic communities in Britain. Scientific analysis of a bronze torc found evidence of mercury gilding, suggesting that techniques and materials travelled to Britain from continental Europe, possibly Iberia, via Atlantic trade routes. The finds challenge Greek and Roman portrayals of the Celts as uncivilised barbarians and show that Iron Age Britain was culturally and technologically connected to Europe.

Wild blackberries are presented as an abundant autumn food with appealing flavour, fibre and vitamin C, though their anthocyanin antioxidants are poorly absorbed and their health effects are more complex than popular “superfood” claims suggest. Evidence from Neolithic sites and the Iron Age Haraldskaer Woman indicates that humans have eaten blackberries for millennia. The article also explains the remarkable diversity and evolutionary history of Rubus species, urging readers to revive this long-standing foraging tradition while braving the plants’ thorns.

Human evolution produces bodies that are effective enough for survival and reproduction rather than perfectly engineered. The spine illustrates this compromise: its vertebrae and discs enable movement and weight-bearing but commonly deteriorate with age, causing conditions such as Schmorl’s nodes and slipped discs. An MRI scan revealed that Alice Roberts had a severely degenerated and herniated L4/5 disc, prompting her to modify her exercise and childcare habits. The condition cannot be reversed, underscoring the inevitability of ageing and mortality despite efforts to slow physical decline.

A chick breathes inside its egg through the chorioallantoic membrane, where oxygen diffuses through the porous shell into blood vessels and carbon dioxide diffuses out. The allantois also stores nitrogen-containing waste. The article explains that humans and other placental mammals develop equivalent embryonic structures: the yolk sac is largely lost, while the allantois and chorioallantoic membrane contribute to the umbilical cord and placenta, reflecting shared evolutionary origins.

Historical palaeontology has been shaped by major frauds, including Piltdown Man, whose human skull and orangutan jaw were exposed as a forgery, and Johann Beringer’s fabricated “lying stones,” which he mistook for genuine fossils. The piece argues that these cases must be understood in their intellectual context: researchers were eager for evidence addressing major questions about human origins and the nature of fossils. While acknowledging the need for skepticism and verification, it rejects the idea that such frauds make the global body of dinosaur research suspect, noting the scale of independent evidence and the implausibility of a worldwide conspiracy. It ends humorously by suggesting that extreme dinosaur denialism may itself be a hoax.

Chance has profoundly shaped individual lives, human existence and the evolution of life on Earth, from conception and genetic mutations to major environmental events such as the asteroid impact that ended the dinosaurs’ dominance. Alice Roberts argues that randomness can itself provide evolutionary advantages, including antibody diversity and biodiversity. She also clarifies the controversy over claims that two-thirds of adult cancers are attributable to “bad luck”: the study concerned variation in cancer risk, not absolute risk, but chance events during DNA replication still influence cancer development. Accepting uncertainty does not eliminate personal responsibility or meaning; people can reduce risks, but cannot control every outcome.

Twelve scientists and science communicators select the most significant scientific developments of 2014. Highlights include evidence that parts of the West Antarctic ice sheet may be in irreversible decline, research showing dogs respond to their owners’ voices, the disputed BICEP2 detection of primordial gravitational waves, the £10m Longitude Prize for tackling antibiotic resistance, and the launch of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2. Other selections celebrate the discovery of a deep-sea octopus’s exceptionally long brooding period, the Nobel-winning discovery of the brain’s navigation system, the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo crash, the Philae landing on Comet 67P, ancient Indonesian shell engravings suggesting sophisticated cognition in Homo erectus, the Orion spacecraft’s test flight, and rapidly improving solar technology.

Breath-holding ability varies widely, but training and slow breathing can help freedivers extend their performance. The article rejects the aquatic ape hypothesis, arguing that voluntary breath-holding and the mammalian diving reflex are not evidence of a watery phase in human evolution. Cooling the face in water can slow the heart rate, a general response among air-breathing vertebrates. Research at University Hospital Birmingham found that patients given oxygen-rich air could hold their breath for around five and a half minutes, potentially allowing breast-cancer radiotherapy to be delivered more precisely in a single exposure. The key limitation appears to be fatigue in the contracted diaphragm rather than the body’s oxygen or carbon-dioxide sensors.

Warm autumn conditions allowed garden spiders and their insect prey to grow larger than usual, with some spiders subsequently moving indoors to find warmth, shelter and mates. The common orb-weaver Araneus diadematus is used to explain the engineering of spider webs, while the piece also describes spider physiology, feeding and reproduction. Sensational headlines about a supposed invasion of giant spiders are portrayed as attempts to provoke arachnophobes, although the author acknowledges both discomfort and admiration for spiders’ role in controlling insect pests.

Scientific understanding of human reproduction has progressed from Aristotle’s semen-and-menstrual-blood theory and preformationism to genetics and the discovery of DNA. However, DNA alone cannot explain how identical genetic information produces different cell types or why genetically identical twins differ. Epigenetics provides an additional layer of explanation by showing how chemical modifications to DNA-packaging proteins regulate which genes are expressed. These discoveries illuminate development and inheritance while emphasizing that major questions about biology remain unresolved.

From September 2015, practical work in science A-levels was to be assessed separately from students’ grades, following concerns that coursework could be repeatedly resubmitted to secure better marks. Scientific organizations warned that the change could weaken practical skills, laboratory provision and students’ interest in science. However, teachers Helen Rogerson and Alom Shaha argued that the existing controlled-assessment system had already damaged practical science by replacing open-ended investigation with recipe-like exercises. The reforms could therefore create an opportunity to restore creativity, independent experimentation and discovery to school science, provided teachers are supported in redesigning practical work.

Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) can cause severe anger, depression, exhaustion and concentration problems, yet it is sometimes misdiagnosed as depression or bipolar disorder. Alice Roberts describes experiencing dramatically worsened mood swings while taking a combined contraceptive pill, including brands such as Microgynon, Ovranette and Levest, and improvement after switching to a progestogen-only mini-pill. Consultant Peter Greenhouse explains that stabilising hormone levels, including through an oestrogen patch, may help some women. The column argues that women and GPs should be clearly warned that combined pills can intensify mood symptoms, since these effects are often overlooked despite being a major reason women stop taking contraception.