You could plausibly claim that the story of cancer began in 1953. By that I don’t, of course, mean that cancer only appeared as a disease in the middle of the twentieth century, but that it was not until the dawn of the age of molecular biology, heralded by the revelation of the shape of the DNA molecule, that we could approach the study of cancer at the molecular level. Even from that point it’s been a mighty slow trek and we’ll come in due course to the many highlights and some of the lowlights of that journey. Before that, we should immerse ourselves in history for a while, partly because it’s jolly interesting, but also because we should pay homage to all those who went before us, battling with the disease either in themselves or as a major challenge to human ingenuity.