About...
Peter Forbes is a science writer with a special interest in the relationship between art and science. He initially trained as a chemist and worked in pharmaceutical and popular natural history publishing, whilst writing poems, and articles for magazines such as New Scientist and World Medicine. He has written numerous articles and reviews, many specializing in the relation between the arts and science, for the Guardian, Independent, The Times, Daily Mail, Financial Times, Scientific American, New Scientist, World Medicine, Modern Painters, New Statesman, and other magazines.
He has edited three anthologies: Scanning the Century: The Penguin Book of the Twentieth Century in Poetry (Viking, 1999), We Have Come Through (Bloodaxe, 2003) and All the Poems You Need to Say I Do (Picador, 2004). In 2001 he published a translation of Primo Levi's The Search for Roots (Penguin Press). The Gecko’s Foot, a book on the new science of bio-inspired materials, was published by Fourth Estate in 2005 and was long-listed for the Aventis Prize. His new book, Dazzled and Deceived: Mimicry and camouflage, is published by Yale University Press. He was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London from 2004-7.
AGENT: Andrew Lownie
Thanks to Rafi O'Dwyer for webwork.
Dazzled and Deceived
Dazzled and Deceived tells the story of mimicry and camouflage in the natural world and how one thing got to look like another. Woven into the story is the work of naturalist who became convinced that nature's camouflage was the key to camouflage in human warfare. And then there are the artists who were fascinated by mimicry in nature and who also were drawn to camouflage in the wars.
Read reviews:
Nature
The Guardian
The Financial Times
The Independent
New Scientist
Natural History
UK Butterflies
History of War