And what would be the point of that?"By such a perfectly judged interjection, Drabble simultaneously offers an apologia and demonstrates the emotional landscape into which Bessie was born and which Chrissie and Faro inherit Inheritance is at the heart of this book. It opens with a meeting about mitochondrial DNA and matrilineal descent in the hall of a Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in South Yorkshire. In the audience are Dora - Bessie's surviving sister - and Faro the bright, beautiful hope for the future, apparently an escapee from the grimness of her genetic inheritance (though mitochondrial tests prove she is actually a direct descendent of Cotterhall man, whose remains, recently discovered, have been dated to 6000BC). We see Faro affected by inherited memory, aware of the pull of her genes yet adaptable. Like the moth, she has the capacity to survive.There are moments of poetry in this many-hued book, spots of illumination matched by a true ear for language: "Bessie Bawtry crouched under the table in an odour of hot plush and coal dust".

The cadence of vowels in that simple sentence is sublime, as is the expression of condensed revulsion Bessie experiences at the sound of her father sucking his pipe: "Spittle, dottle, wet lungs, wet lips, wet whiskers."The Peppered Moth is a fascinating, detailed book but it only truly ignites as a novel with the sections involving Faro. She is the character to whom the reader is most drawn, who is most fictionalised. This is not surprising since Drabble is a consummate novelist. In her Afterword she says that, like her mother, she cannot sing. Maybe not; but she sure as hell can write.* Lesley Glaister's new novel, 'Now You See Me', will be published by Bloomsbury this spring.

When Joseph Schumpeter described capitalism as a gale of creative destruction, he could not know that he had invented one of the buzzwords of the Nineties. The great Austrian economist coined the expression to capture the central paradox of market capitalism. It is the most successful system for creating wealth the world has ever known - precisely because it is the most efficient in destroying unproductive industries and enterprises. When Joseph Schumpeter described capitalism as a gale of creative destruction, he could not know that he had invented one of the buzzwords of the Nineties. The great Austrian economist coined the expression to capture the central paradox of market capitalism. It is the most successful system for creating wealth the world has ever known - precisely because it is the most efficient in destroying unproductive industries and enterprises. Free markets make most people better off by giving them access to new technologies and new products. But no one is sheltered from the storm of innovation that makes this growing prosperity possible.Schumpeter saw that the success of capitalism comes from the ruthlessness with which it does away with the past.