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  • Charles Darwin

  • Victorian Mythmaker
  • By: A. N. Wilson
  • Narrated by: Richard Burnip
  • Length: 18 hrs and 37 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (13 ratings)

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Charles Darwin

By: A. N. Wilson
Narrated by: Richard Burnip
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Summary

A radical reappraisal of Charles Darwin from the best-selling author of Victoria: A Life

Charles Darwin: the man who discovered evolution? The man who killed off God? Or a flawed man of his age, part genius, part ruthless careerist who would not acknowledge his debts to other thinkers?

In this bold new life - the first single volume biography in 25 years - A. N. Wilson, the acclaimed author of The Victorians and God's Funeral, goes in search of the celebrated but contradictory figure Charles Darwin.

Darwin was described by his friend and champion, Thomas Huxley, as a 'symbol'. But what did he symbolize? In Wilson's portrait, both sympathetic and critical, Darwin was two men. On the one hand, he was a naturalist of genius, a patient and precise collector and curator who greatly expanded the possibilities of taxonomy and geology. On the other hand, Darwin, a seemingly diffident man who appeared gentle and even lazy, hid a burning ambition to be a universal genius. He longed to have a theory which explained everything.

But was Darwin's 1859 master work, On the Origin of Species, really what it seemed, a work about natural history? Or was it in fact a consolation myth for the Victorian middle classes, reassuring them that the selfishness and indifference to the poor were part of nature's grand plan?

Charles Darwin: Victorian Mythmaker is a radical reappraisal of one of the great Victorians, a book which isn't afraid to challenge the Darwinian orthodoxy while bringing us closer to the man, his revolutionary idea and the wider Victorian age.

©2017 A. N. Wilson (P)2017 John Murray Press
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Critic reviews

"Hugely enjoyable." (Spectator)
"A lucid, elegantly written and thought-provoking social and intellectual history." (Evening Standard)
"As a historian trying to put Darwin in the context of his time, there is surely no better biographer than Wilson." (The Times)

What listeners say about Charles Darwin

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Breaking the myth....

A book that I know I will return to. A philosophy that has underpinned much of our thinking and I’m sure will continue, nothing can be ignored. The story is enhanced by the narrator Richard Burnip who does great justice in bringing together and delivering a great masterpiece.

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A biography of an idea

I really enjoyed A.N. Wilson's "biography of an idea", referring of course to Darwin's Theory of Evolution.

Wilson's elegant prose really brings to life Darwin and the many fascinating characters who preceded and surrounded him.

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A poor biography

This biography of Darwin is written by a man who dislikes his subject and is intent on making the reader dislike him too. This is done in both open and insidious ways. It made me dislike and distrust the author and I stopped listening halfway through. I was also finding the science confused and confusing.
I do not recommend this book.

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