Ann Kennedy Smith

This week has seen many articles and obituaries dedicated to the work of the American scientist James Watson, who has died at the age of 97. In later years he was infamous for his repellent views on race and genetics, and rightly ostracized by the scientific community. But he is most famous for identifying the double-helix structure of DNA along with with British scientist Francis Crick, in 1953.

Hello and welcome! Since very early this morning, at Stonehenge and elsewhere in the UK, people have been celebrating the summer solstice and the longest day of the year. It’s officially midsummer in the northern hemisphere, though Midsummer’s Day is 24th June, confusingly.

Welcome to Cambridge Ladies’ Dining Society and happy Bloomsday to all those who celebrate. The first ‘official’ Bloomsday was marked in Dublin on 16th June 1954, when a small group of writers and artists gathered to honour the places mentioned in Irish writer James Joyce’s novel Ulysses (1922).