Fred Sanger (FS) and I (GB) are seated in a recording studio at Imperial College, London. This is a slightly edited transcript of the first interview.

1. GB Those of us who have worked with you, Fred, know of your passion and vision for research and your interest in developing new methods. We also know you chose important scientific problems that were well ahead of their time. Less well known, but by no means less important, is your ability to get on with colleagues and students. You guided by example, not by dominating people, always encouraged and rarely criticising. You had, I suspect, a respect for people. You have a disarming natural modesty, rare in one so eminent.

2. For this reason many people, including me, would like to know something of your background, your parentage, your schooling and early influences.

3. FSI was born in 1918 and brought up in Gloucestershire, in a small Gloucester village, Rendcomb, in the Cotswolds, a very nice part of the world to live in. My father was the local doctor; he was a medical doctor. We have a picture of him here (Figure 1, left). Here is a picture of me (Figure 1, right) at about the same time, 1918, being held by my grandfather, Theodore Crewdson, on my mother’s side, and another picture of me, 8 months old (Figure 2).