Setting

The Double Helix is set primarily in England in the early 1950s. As Watson notes in the preface, he wants his book "to catch the atmosphere of the early postwar years in England," depicting the public's eagerness to rebuild spirits, as well as buildings, in the aftermath of World War II. He accomplishes this by including such trivialities as what type of wine is enjoyed with certain dinners and conversations that take place over morning coffee or lunches with gooseberry pie. He entwines his account of scientific data with comments on movies he sees, intellectual games he plays with members of high-society, and the fun he has playing ' 'Murder"—a whodunit role-playing game—in the dark upstairs floors of friends' houses. He goes on at some length about Crick's half-French wife, Odile, who "came to Cambridge and hastened [Crick's] revolt against the stodginess of the middle classes...