I thought journalism would enable me to be a mile wide and an inch deep.' I actually liked the writing, so I thought maybe journalism was the thing for me. I liked big pictures rather than small details, and unlike my colleagues I enjoyed the process of writing up my thesis. 'I didn't have sufficient patience for detail. They're mammals'), and he chuckles at the memory of what at the time must have been quite a sobering realization-that he wasn't cut out for science. He smiles while recalling his thesis on polygamy among pheasants ('turns out birds like pheasants aren't birds at all. I only vaguely realized that science was a little more than natural history, but by then I was hooked.' Ridley's youthful addiction led to a fascination with the books of Gerald Durrell, Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould, and a Ph.D. I collected things, I spent a lot of time outdoors. My obsession in my youth was with bird-watching. 'I started out wanting to be a naturalist. In fact, Matt Ridley never planned on being a writer. And it made me feel that I had to take my writing very seriously, that I could defend my writing time much more vigorously from other demands on it.' 'It enabled me to buy a few things I hadn't bought before. 'It was great,' the angular Englishman recalls with a goofy grin.

auction market with a 5,000-word proposal in June of '96 and the result was Ridley's first six-figure advance, a check made out for $165,000. As for Genome, independent agent Felicity Bryan stormed the U.S.

Science writing, like biotech stock buying, has been a solid growth opportunity throughout the '90s, and Ridley has already hit pay dirt with The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature and The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation (both available in Penguin paperback editions). I want everyone who bought a copy of A Brief History of Time to buy a copy of Genome.'

But I strongly believe that my book can be read by the intelligent layman. It's terrifying the way molecular biology has become more and more jargon ridden. 'The knowledge of genes and genomes is something that's going to touch all our lives, and I think that it's terribly important it doesn't remain the preserve of experts. Near the unmade bed, on chairs recently cleared of yesterday's and tomorrow's coat-and-tie ensembles, we settle down for a chat about agents, editors and chimp-human hybrids. 'There's a bit of an evangelical fervor about all of this,' Ridley observes from a midtown Manhattan hotel room exhibiting some symptoms of the frenetic Boston to D.C.

Genome by matt ridley