[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_15_May_2014_v4.mp3" title="Nicholas Wade discusses what we've learnt from decoding the human genome" startat=44] Listen [/audioplayer]Ever since Darwin published his uncomforting theory, people have been trying to exempt themselves from one or another of its unwelcome consequences. Today’s equivalents of the 19th century’s outraged clerics include the many social scientists, economists and historians who insist that evolution is of no relevance to their disciplines.

One afternoon in 1942, Kenneth Clark and his wife Jane called on two young painters for tea. The artists were John Craxton and Lucian Freud, then both around 20 and sharing a house in St John’s Wood. The visit was a success, as Craxton told me many years later, but not without its awkward moments. Jane Clark had to be headed off from helping in the kitchen, since the oven contained dead monkeys that were currently serving as models, placed there to restrict the smell.

As I came into Parliament last Thursday, I swung by the newspaper stand  to take a brief look at the headlines. ‘Oxford Union president, 21, arrested on suspicion of rape and attempted rape,’ said one. My heart sank. A photo of the beaming Oxford Union president, Ben Sullivan, dominated the front page in his swanky dinner jacket. He looked as if he had the world before him — until, that is, the police knocked on his door, warrant in hand.