They were certainly happy times, the early 70's, in the years preceding Jean's untimely death. For the most part, as I recall, people in the lab got on well together and many interesting lines of research were opened up and developed. My earlier experience had been in crystallography and when I joined the group at King's I was pleased that the techniques I had learned could be successfully applied to structures in muscle as analysed by x-ray diffraction and electron microscopy. The group seemed well balanced with experts in biochemical as well as biophysical techniques on the staff and with a good influx of research students, post-doctorals and visiting workers on sabbatical. Above all we worked well under the enthusiastic and benevolent stewardship of Jean. She was not only dedicated to the pursuit of research but took her responsibilities as a group leader most seriously, always caring about and attending to the needs of the research staff and students. I of course was devoted to my work, seeking not only to satisfy intellectual curiosity but also to explore the wonders of nature and to further the benefit of mankind. Or was it that I just wanted to do a nice piece of work to please Jean?

One of the most civilised features at Drury Lane was the large tea-room on the ground floor. This was something lacking in the labs I had visited as a post-doc in the US, where refreshment was often taken standing in front of an array of robot machines. At MIT I instituted a tea making facility which drew enthusiastic crowds keen for a good English cuppa, made with Red Label sent by my mother, but it was confined to a benchtop in a corner of the lab. I was impressed with the Drury Lane set-up on my first day there and was very glad that various pressures that arose during subsequent years to convert it to a lab were successfully countered. It was not long after I started that the rather fierce lady serving in the tea-room was replaced during her summer holiday by an altogether gentler, younger and prettier helper. This was for me the start of a romance that is still continuing!

After Jean's death people carried on with their research projects in much the same way but there was necessarily a loss of cohesive effort. We came under the direction of Maurice Wilkins, who, though thoughtful and kindly when approached, never wished to take an active interest in muscle studies. An early casualty in my work was that undertaken with Jean-Marie and Dave Worcester, a neutron specialist. Dave was looking for a biological project and, characteristically, Jean set about designing a muscle programme with enthusiasm and we obtained beam time at the neutron facility in Grenoble. We made several visits there to use the very low-angle diffractometer and promising results were obtained on contracting muscle, indicating a large transfer of mass from thick to thin filaments during contraction. It was difficult to set up the apparatus in time for the crucial allocation of beam time. We had to take our own frogs (the French eat all theirs, of course) and the establishment was not at all equipped for biological research. It was perfectly possible to obtain a cryostat capable of getting below 1^oK, but there was no cooling bath for a frog sartorius, although, since it was usually winter when we went there (very good skiing being only a bus ride away), we were able to get ample snow from outside! Anyway, for political reasons (the director wanted to concentrate on his own virus studies, I think) our allocation of beam time was discontinued. There was little we could do but Jean, of course, would have fought tooth and nail to re-establish the programme and with her position and influence might well have succeeded. Apart from the scientific interest it was an interesting cultural experience to work in France. At how many staff canteens in England would pig's trotters be served for lunch?

An immediate legacy of Jean's death was that I took over as Pauline's supervisor of her PhD work. What a trial that was! How I toiled and struggled to get some work out of that lazy student! I wrote most of the thesis myself! No, of course my position was a complete sinecure. Pauline produced a most impressive body of work and a thesis which Hugh Huxley, her examiner, said was the best he had ever read. Jean would have been thrilled. Subsequently I supervised a number of research students. Geoff Johnson obtained very good x-ray diffraction patterns from thin filament gels, showing the effect of troponin and tropomyosin very clearly. A radial projection of the equatorial data revealed the two-domain structure of the actin monomer, evidence that correlated with electron microscope image analysis. Geoff was a perfectionist however and never could finish his thesis, even when a post-doctoral fellowship at Heidelberg was offered as incentive. Subsequent students were more organised. Ed Morris worked on electron miscoscopy of thin filament assemblies and eventually obtained a lectureship at Imperial College. Jonathan Seymour wrote a massive compendium on natural and synthetic thin filaments, but sought safety in a more permanent position than that afforded by Universities and got a job with a computing firm. Helen Carr, my last student, worked very efficiently and completed her thesis in the prescribed three years only, a formidable achievement. Other people to join me at various times were, at postdoctoral level, Loriana Castellani from Italy and, on sabbatical from the US, Sam Lehrer and Bob Mendelson. For many years I was very fortunate in having the assistance of Diana Terry and John Couch. John left to design textiles, though I never caught up on his progress in this field. Perhaps he entered the world of haute couture and designed for models quite different from those at King's. I also greatly appreciated my collaboration with Gerald Offer at various times. He was one of the mainstays of the group for a very long time and it was a great loss when he moved away at the end of the 70's.

Around 1977 there was an interesting development when Chris dos Remedios from Sydney paid a six-month visit. Together with Mike Dickens our electron-microscope technician, he discovered that actin in the presence of gadolinium ions formed sheet-like and tubular assemblies quite unlike the normal helical filament, and they wrote an attractive paper for Nature. I was consulted from time to time about the analysis but was rather taken aback at one point by being asked to adjudicate on which of the two authors should be the first name. I did not have the authority to make a decision on such a sensitive issue and it was a clear example of where the loss of Jean was still keenly apparent. The argument about authorship had a long-term influence in that we did not know how much to pursue the topic after Chris returned to Australia. Later, in an MRC report, there was criticism of this lack of initiative. In other labs the line was developed, without fulfilling its early promise of higher resolution information, so perhaps after all the best had been creamed off in that first paper.

I very much valued my association with Ichiro Matsubara during the several extended visits he made to Drury Lane. Like Jean-Marie his background was in physiology and medicine, complementary to my own, and it was interesting and rewarding to collaborate with them. With Jean-Marie I carried out analysis of thin filaments and the effect of calcium, work which Jean-Marie tells me is still referred to today, and with Ichiro and his protege Naoto Yagi I was able to contribute some theoretical analysis to their work on contracting muscle. Ichiro had such a wonderful friendly personality and got on well with everybody, but he combined this with a strong will and fierce determination to succeed. It was all the more distressing that someone with such fine abilities and attributes should be struck down in his prime, and we all mourn his loss just as for Jean. I still keep contact with his family however, and his elder son, Kentaro, visited us during his two-year stay in Oxford, where he studied for a PhD in Law. There are alarming statistics showing that a considerable proportion of people, particularly men, do not reach the age of sixty-five. It still seems that the mortality distribution was skewed at King's where we lost Dave Gilbert, Howard Davies and Arnie Fasoli as well as Jean and Ichiro in a relatively short span of years. These additional casualties were predominantly involved in structural studies (neurofilaments, chromatin, etc) so that the input of the department in this direction was considerably diluted. We were very fortunate however, in the longevity of Arthur Elliott whose work flourished well after retirement age, and who was a source of inspiration to us all.

In the decade following Jean's death my family developed apace: James was born in 1974, William in 1976, Pamela in 1978 and David in 1982. They have all pursued different specialities. James has considerable flair for history and read this subject at Trinity College, Cambridge, which is my old college as well as that of Sir Andrew Huxley, with whom many of us have had some collaboration in the muscle field, and who retired as Master of Trinity shortly before James' time there. I do not think the paternal connection had any influence whatsoever in securing James a place, and Sir Andrew was unavailable for lobbying (if one can conceive of such a thing). So James had to succeed on his own merit. After graduating he took a one-year MSc in financial management and is now "someone in the city" where he works in the evaluation of risk involved in financial transactions, particularly currency dealings. Risk management is an attempt to predict the future where all eventualities are considered and an optimum course of action decided. I am sure James, whose heart is still entrenched in the history of the late-Roman Empire, would sometimes prefer the simpler course of action open to the ancients: consult the oracle! William, the second son, developed an early passion for astronomy, filling his bedroom with star charts and pictures of the planets, so it was a natural choice for him to read Astrophysics at Manchester. He is now approaching the end of the course but since professional options in astronomy are rather limited he plans to take a postgraduate course in telecommunications, a burgeoning field currently with good career prospects. He will certainly be well qualified to join the growing band of those listening in for ET! Pamela's forte is English (like her mother) and is in her second year at Leeds. She is very active on the university scene, having starred in a number of student musicals and directed one. The future is still wide open but I am sure she will make her mark in whatever career she chooses. David, now seventeen, has developed into a very fine musician, playing piano, double bass and guitar, and with a strong interest in jazz. My fault, I suppose, but we have great fun playing together and attending jazz sessions and courses.

Despite the heavy maternal burden imposed by a young family Paula did not neglect her study of early eighteenth century English literature and wrote a comprehensive dissertation on the life and work of James Miller, poet and playwright, gaining a PhD in 1979. Although her academic activity has since that time been somewhat dormant she has recently been requested to write a piece on Miller for the Dictionary of National Biography, and has discovered that her treatise is the definitive work on the writer. The last Dictionary was written in the nineteenth century so what she presents now will presumably last until the twenty-second century enduring fame indeed!

Our household was further increased in 1978 when my mother came, and remained until her death at the age of ninety-five, ten years later. Also in 1985 Paula's grandmother, similarly advanced in years, stayed for two and a half years. It was perhaps beneficial for the children to have the older generation to interact with and understand, but the responsibility for those in between (us) was considerable, and the house was very crowded!

I suppose my interest in business stemmed from my upbringing in a pub. As a young boy I helped my father, or at least I thought I did, with washing glasses and other menial tasks. Later, during university vacations, I made a more substantial contribution, serving customers and assisting with the accounts. A small advertisement in my college common-room encouraged a stream of undergraduates keen to sample the delights of life at the other side of the bar. This provided my father with adequate manpower at busy times and no doubt furthered the careers of those students who were able to put down "pulling pints" on their cv as work experience.

It was one of those strange ironies of life that while I was at MIT, around 1964, my good friend Ray Dolby from college days wrote to me from India where he had a job with UNESCO. He was thinking of setting up an "old buddies" lab in London and had one or two ideas of commercial interest to develop would I like to join? The irony was that I never received the letter, possibly because of the inefficiency of the Indian (or the US) postal service. Otherwise, as I had no specific plans at the time but wanted to return to England, I would probably have accepted the offer. Some time later when I met Ray he was already well advanced in his enterprise, joined by his brother, and the offer had lapsed. The Dolby noise reduction system became a huge world-wide success and eventually Ray moved to San Francisco with most of his entourage. So I might have enjoyed the Californian dream, surrounded by expensive cars, luxurious yachts and gorgeous girls. But then I would never have experienced Drury Lane, the realm of the truly beautiful people!

Anyway, through many discussions with Ray, I did assimilate some of his experience with starting a business (with limited capital) and this proved very valuable when, many years later, the pianos idea developed. Like so many business ideas this arose by accident. In 1977 we moved to a larger house in Muswell Hill and, for a relatively small sum, the vendor included some furniture including an old piano. I did some work on the piano, mostly cleaning, and sold it for a considerable profit. Over the next few years I repeated the exercise, buying pianos, most at auction, for reconditioning and reselling. When I suggested to Paula that we open a little shop in Muswell Hill, she readily agreed, possibly because she was fed up with the house and garage being littered with pianos and piano parts. We knew a very bright young man, recently graduated with a 2.1 honours in pharmacology at UCL and he became our first manager, having failed to secure a position as a pharmaceutical salesman (they said he looked too young!). Despite this valuable acquisition and the securing of very good premises, we found the going extremely hard at first, indeed for the first several years. Like most small entrepreneurs we had insufficient capital and underestimated the importance of cash-flow. It was easy to understand the old adage: "How do you make a small fortune "start with a large one!" Although there are many factors involved in running your own business having a good idea or product, good staff, a good location, etc it is basically about the management of money, and cash-flow problems are ever present. With the banks there is a catch-22 situation they will not lend money until you show success, so how do you achieve this without their money? As Mark Twain remarked a banker will lend you an umbrella when it is sunny and demand it back when it rains. I was very disappointed also with the level of ability and integrity of many business people. I suppose I thought we would open the doors of the shop (which was in a prominent high street position) and almost immediately piano tuners, technicians, suppliers, movers etc would come in, wish us well, and offer their services. Nothing happened, then more nothing only very slowly were we able to get the kind of help and helpers we required. In the academic world, people generally do what they say they will even if rather belatedly (like the writing of this piece) but in business so many people seem to be living by their wits and can be very slippery indeed.

We started in 1983 and slowly built the business up, providing pianos for rental as well as purchase. Our manager left after two years to become a stock market analyst but was replaced by a friend of his, Charles, also a science graduate from UCL (any more out-of-work scientists need jobs?) who was very business-like and hard-working. He suggested we expand to the West End and accordingly in 1987 we acquired premises in Knightsbridge, in a secondary location but very near Harrods. At that time house prices were rising rapidly, with inflation high, and people were spending. Shortly afterwards the crunch came and a severe recession developed. So our timing was unfortunate and we were faced with developing a new site, at high rent, in a worsening climate. I retired from the MRC in 1988 and had more time for the business. Paula also became increasingly involved and we were able to cut down on staff. To our great dismay Charles left to start his own business at a garden centre in the sticks somewhere. A guitar playing semi-hippy Californian talked his way into our employ by telling us how he tuned pianos for the stars in LA. He was in London to seek his guru, a famous classical guitar teacher, but he needed bread and liked us, so he stayed on for many years, partly as shop assistant and partly as technician.

The recession worked in our favour when our lease in Knightsbridge expired in 1992, as many more shops were available. We found ideal premises in South Kensington, opposite Christie's Auction Rooms. Many firms, including some household names, had gone broke and the previous tenant, running a delicatessen, had done this in spectacular fashion, doing a moonlight flit and leaving the shop and contents intact. Perishable foods had been cleared by the time we arrived but there were still over one hundred bottles of wine and enough tinned rice pudding to last a lifetime!

My brother, whom some of you will remember was manager at the Russell Hotel where Paula and I had an engagement party, had moved to Saudi Arabia where he enjoyed the benefit of a tax-free salary. This attraction began to pall however, when one of Saddam's Scuds landed near his hotel, and he accepted our invitation to join the business, remaining with us until 1998 when he retired to his garden in Somerset. Currently, Paula and I run the South Kensington shop on our own. We have closed the premises in Muswell Hill but retain a workshop in Barnet, employing three technicians. The shop has done well, gradually building up a reputation and clientele. About half our customers are foreign, especially French since the Lycee is very close, and the area is generally very prosperous. We have supplied pianos to show-biz celebrities Julian Lloyd-Webber, Richard Gere, Mick Jagger and even to Royalty (the Duchess of York has been renting a piano for over four years and is usually a late payer). By far our most important customer however has been that distinguished scientist, Dr Pauline Bennett, who bought a Broadwood grand. Are there any more of you out there?

Running a business has been interesting and a challenge, and often great fun. One feels in control of one's destiny (though the taxman might argue otherwise). I very much miss the excitement of research however, and the opportunities for the interchange of ideas and the development of lasting friendships with colleagues. Now that my family responsibilities are declining I would hope to do some science again if I could find an appropriate avenue. If any of you are aware of a niche where I could make a voluntary contribution, please let me know.

End

EDWARD TAYLER

My Grandfather, Edward Tayler, passed away recently. A great shock to all of us, you can see his photo with us last Christmas. It will be sad that next Christmas will be our first without him. Here are two tributes read out at his funeral, the first is from my mother and the second from Doreen Leonard, Ted's step daughter.

Ted, as he was always known, was brought up in Cowley. When the war broke out he volunteered, at 19, for the RAF, and served the whole war in North Africa and Europe. His tales of those days, when elicited by his grandchildren, had a vividness and immediacy they found fascinating. After the war he joined the NHS, as a nurse at Littlemore Hospital, qualified RMN, and retired many years later, as a charge nurse. Afterwards he remained in touch with the hospital by running an occupational therapy group for the patients in gardening, for several more years.

He was a devoted husband to his first wife, Pamela, who died tragically young, from leukaemia, the knowledge of which he bore for months in silent fortitude. After I, their daughter, left home, he lived alone many years, until winning the heard of neighbour and colleague, Maisie, who had also been widowed and had children and grandchildren already. They live very happily in Littlemore for fourteen years, until he, and all of us, suffered the devatstating loss of Maisie, again to a painful illness.

Alone again, he kept their house neat and spotless, and the garden, his great interest, beautifully cultivated. Too reserved to develop a social life, he came to London every other weekend, and took a warm interest in the lives of his grandchildren, from both sides of the family. He was always cheerful and uncomplaining about his troubles, and ready to sympathise with other people's.

His end was very sudden, and unexpected, and therefore without suffering, so we have nothing to grieve for except the loss of him.

Growing up I remember Ted as Mr Tayler from across the road. I thought he had a great, but curious sense of style, his penchant for sports cars, rakish moustaches and poodles. We all felt for him at the tragic loss of his young, beautiful wife Pam. He brought up Paula single handed in an age when this was rare. He worked alongside Mum at the hospital, his stories of those years revealing his compassionate nature. It was a working relationship that blossomed into a very successful marriage, but, yet again he had to bear the premature loss of a loved partner.

Ted was a quiet man, he bore his troubles privately. He was rightly extremely proud of his clever and flourishing grandchildren. He died the way we all want to go, mowing his lawn one day, gone the next. We will love him, especially those for whom he was simply, Grampy.