Voices of Science

Well I’m pleased with where I’ve got to, that’s the first thing to say. And I would never have expected to get to being FRS level which among scientists, you know, is a big deal [laughs]. Er, there’s a huge element of luck in – well in specific sense that I could easily have gone into industry when I left university and I would clearly be doing something very different then. I mean I might have been at a high level in industry and you might still have been fascinated to talk to me about that [laughs], but nonetheless that – yeah, that could easily have happened rather than me being in academia. And when I left BAS to go to the Water Research Centre in 1983 and then came back in 1984, or am I a year out? Anyway, whatever year it was, I mean if it hadn’t been to be honest for the Falklands War BAS wouldn’t have had the money to employ me because BAS got a boost in funding after the Falklands War that led to a new – to the second half of the building being built and to some recruitment, and the post I came back to simply wouldn’t have existed if it hadn’t been for that. So now this sounds terrible ‘cause I sound as though I’m saying that the Falklands War was lucky but I mean it’s a – a series of incidents that one of the outcomes of which was that I’m still working on ice cores, I would quite certainly not be working on ice cores if General Galtieri had not been the Argentinean President [laughs].