London’s Imperial Cancer Research Fund laboratories at Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Clare Hall (renamed The London Research Institute in 2002) were world-famous for a century. This book, published with the assistance of the Institute, contains snapshots of the science done at the ICRF, a selection of discoveries with lasting impact on biological knowledge. The author, Kathy Weston, an experienced research investigator, also tells the human stories underlying the facts of discovery, revealing what really happened, and the personalities involved, behind the passive voice and dry logic of scientific reports. Science is an emotional journey, an art, a vocation, a complicated landscape of data in which, just sometimes, the trained and alert eye can detect the glint of gold. In this book, the gold is there but the all too human scientists stumbling towards its seductive glimmer are the real treasure.