Sir Walter's journey.

Sir Walter Bodmer, geneticist and Director of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, devised a project to establish the genetic history of communities by monitoring blood group patterns which reveal patterns of inheritance and migration, hitherto unnoticed by historians. He visits the Lake District and Orkney, as well as examining blood group information about Greek and Turkish Cypriots in London where the type of thalassaemia suffered by both groups indicates a common inheritance. The latest development in Sir Walter's project is to obtain samples of ancient DNA from pre-Viking tombs on Orkney in the hope of matching them with samples from the island's present inhabitants.