The Vitamin Murders

This is a punchy non-fiction expose from a top-ten author that does for the food industry what "The Constant Gardener" did for pharmaceuticals - a tale of unsolved murder, industrial espionage, chemical contamination and dietary disaster. 

James Fergusson

Dashing out of the maternity hospital clutching his first-born tight, James Fergusson felt that universal urge to protect his child from the world. However, from all he'd found out in the preceding months, he also knew that the battle for his daughter's dietary health was already all but lost.

James discovers that back during WWII, against all the odds, the besieged Britons ate better, nutritionally, than ever they had before or since. And one man was responsible for keeping the country fit to fight the Nazis: Sir Jack Drummond, Churchill's Chief Food Scientist, a hero in his time, unjustly forgotten now. Could the man who named Vitamin A and Vitamin B have saved the Englishman's food? Might James' daughter have had a less contaminated beginning in life?

Curious as much about the career and legacy of the remarkable Drummond as about his own family's chemical cocktail, Fergusson sets off for la France profonde to find out what we have lost.

"The author interweaves the story of Drummond and the debasement of the modern British diet with great passion and tenacity." - Sunday Times Culture

"You can't help liking the author of this attempt to dig up - figuratively- the English bodies in a notorious 55-year old French murder case." - The Observer

"[One] can only hint at the riches of this remarkable book, which captures possibly better than any other the fascination of truly original scientific research while bringing into focus one of the major intellectual challenges of our times." - James Le Fanu, Literary Review

"A gripping read, it immerses the reader in the world of chemical technology, post-war nutritionists and cold-war conspiracy theories." - Good Book Guide

"Intriguing, and compulsively readable" - Publishing News

"This hard-hitting expose of the food industry, which tells a story of espionage, contamination and dietary disaster, certainly fuels debate." - The Bookseller

"Conspiracy, murder, industrial espionage and the destruction of our diet since the war. An extraordinary story." - The Bookseller

"Fergusson interweaves an intriguing real life murder mystery with the short, shameful history of the agrochemical industry that has made unwitting guinea pigs of us all. Deftly put together and compellingly written, it left me with a nasty taste in my mouth, and an itch to scratch." - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

"James Fergusson has done us all a great service. This book is thought provoking and frightening in turns, but most of all it is utterly brilliant. This is an important book; read it and weep, then get very, very, angry."  - Tim Smit, Director, Eden Project

"This fascinating book is not just a revealing exposé of our country's bad eating habits and chemically-skewed farming practices, but also literally an investigative crime story...get the book...A great story."  - Paul Quinn, Organic Life

About the Author

James Fergusson started out in journalism in 1989. He has written for many publications since, including The Independent, The European, The Daily Mail and Prospect magazine, covering current affairs in Europe, North Africa, Central Asia, the Far East and the Caribbean. His first book was the critically-acclaimed Kandahar Cockney and his most recent is A Million Bullets: The Real Story of the War in Afghanistan. He is married with two daughters and a son, and lives in Edinburgh.