Along the driveway to James Lovelock’s remote house of Coombe Mill was a warning one might hardly expect amid the tranquil Devon hills: a radiation hazard sign. It was not there simply to deter unwanted snoopers, for what lurked in Lovelock’s private laboratory adjoining his house was truly hair-raising: radioactive sources, TNT and semtex. If there had ever been a fire, Lovelock laughed, “it would’ve blown up the house”.
For most of his career, almost until he became a centenarian, this scion of the environmental movement conducted work for the British security establishment, including explosives research for the forces in Northern Ireland. When he met the queen to receive his CBE in 1990, he responded to her famous question “And what do you do?” with “I’m sorry, I can’t talk about it.” The incongruity of Lovelock and his second wife, Sandy, standing reverently in their garden before a statue representing the Earth goddess Gaia, yards away from research given to Lovelock by MI5 because it was too dangerous for official channels, exemplifies the contradictions of the man and his extraordinary life. In The Many Lives of James Lovelock, Guardian environment journalist Jonathan Watts does it justice.
