website: www.colintudge.com

Colin Tudge was born in London in 1943. He has a lifelong interest in biology and a long-standing interest in farming, food politics, “various bits of philosophy”, and is especially interested these days in the relationship between science and religion—“both are necessary”. He has three children and two grandchildren, and lives in Oxford with his wife Ruth West.

Since leaving university in 1965 (Peterhouse, Cambridge, Zoology) Colin Tudge has earned his living by writing and broadcasting. Between 1980 and 1984 he was features editor for New Scientist magazine. He has also worked on science programmes for BBC Radio and presented the regular programme “Spectrum”.

Colin Tudge has written for various magazines and newspapers including Farmer's Weekly, New Scientist, The New Statesman, Nature, The Times, The Independent, The Independent on Sunday, The Guardian, Resurgence, The Daily Mail, The London Review of Books, Natural History, BBC Wildlife Magazine, Index for Free Expression. But mainly he writes books, two of which have been shortlisted for the COPUS/Poulence Science Book of the Year; Last Animals at the Zoo (1991) and The Engineer in the Garden (1993). The Day Before Yesterday (1995) won the B.P. Conservation Book of the Year Award.

Colin Tudge is a former member of the Council for the Zoological Society of London and since 1995 has been a visiting Research Fellow of the Centre for Philosophy at the London School of Economics.

Author Statement

«I very much enjoy the craft of writing (and it is primarily a craft. Art is a bonus.). But also: I like to get my thoughts straight—and writing is the best way to do this. I would like to write more about philosophy, politics and religion, and their relationship to science. So far I haven't done much in those fields but I'm leaning more and more in these directions.»

Released by Pari Publishing

Feeding People is Easy

Colin Tudge's essay “Science, Religion, and Me Personally” appears in Volume I of the Pari Dialogues series, Pari Publishing, 2007

Published work by Colin Tudge

Books (UK and US edition)

The Secret Life of Trees

Allen Lane, London, 2005. Penguin Books, London 2006. Publishes as The Tree by Crown, New York, 2006.

So Shall We Reap: the Concept of Enlightened Agriculture

Allen Lane, London, 2003. Penguin Books, London, 2004.

In Mendel's Footnotes: Genes and Genetics from the 19th Century to the 22nd

Jonathan Cape, 2000. Paperback: Vintage, 2002. Published as The Impact of the Gene, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York, 2001.

The Variety of Life: a Survey and a Celebration of All the Creatures That Have Ever Lived

Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2000. Paperback, March 2002.

Neanderthals, Bandits, and Farmers

Weidenfield & Nicolson, London, 1998. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1999.

The Day Before Yesterday

Jonathan Cape, London, 1995. Pimlico, London, 1996. Published in the US as The Time Before History Scribner, New York, 1996. Touchstone, New York, 1997.

The Engineer in the Garden: Genes and Genetics from the Idea of Heredity to the Creation of Life

Jonathan Cape, London, 1993. Hill & Wang, New York, 1995. Pimlico (Pbk), 1995.

Last Animals at the Zoo

Hutchinson Radius, London, 1991. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992. Island Press, Washington, 1992.

Global Ecology

Natural History Museum, 1991. Oxford University Press, New York 1991.

Food Crops for the Future

Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1988.

The Food Connection

British Broadcasting Corporation, London, 1985.

Future Cook

Mitchell Beazley 1980. Published as Future Food Harmony Books, New York, 1980.

The Famine Business

Faber and Faber, London, 1977. St Martin's Press, New York, 1977. Penguin Books (Pelican), Middlesex, 1979.

Co-authorships

The Second Creation: Dolly and the Age of Biological Control

co-authored with Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell; Headline, London, 2000. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York, 2000.

Home Farm

co-authored with Michael Allaby; Macmillan, London, 1977. Sphere Books, London, 1979.

Prizes and awards

1995 BP Conservation Book of the Year Award

The Day Before Yesterday

1993 COPUS/Rhone Poulence Science Book of the Year (shortlisted)

The Engineer in the Garden

1991 COPUS/Rhone Poulence Science Book of the Year (shortlisted)

Last Animals at the Zoo

1990 Glaxo/ABSW Science Writer of the Year Award

1984 Glaxo/BSW Science Writer of the year Award

1972 Glaxo/ABSW Science Writer of the Year Award