Charles Darwin
There’s nothing shameful about hypochondria
Caroline Crampton describes the real agonies of people obsessed with their fragility, revealing that her own hypochondria stems from a childhood cancer diagnosis
Dinosaurs, dogma and the Victorian mind
The ‘monsters’ dug from the cliffs of Lyme Regis did not sit well with the literal reading of Genesis – but many other issues contributed to the famed Victorian crisis of faith
The mad, bad and dangerous theories of Thomas Henry Huxley
Racism lies at the heart of the Victorian rewrite of the creation myth. What happened in prehistory, according to Thomas…
My literary heroes have led me astray
Gstaad Good manners aside, what I miss nowadays is a new, intelligent, finely acted movie. Never have I seen…
Where did birds first learn to sing?
Fieldwork can move the most rigorous scientist to lyricism, as Mark Cocker discovers
Pigeons are plucky and loyal — so don’t go poisoning them in the park
Growing up as a rootless army brat in bases home and abroad, I would listen in appalled delight to my…
We need Christianity more than ever in this Age of Atheists
Have we ever needed Christianity more than we do today? It’s a rhetorical question, for sure, because the loss of…
Matt Ridley manages to Pangloss over the nastier aspects of evolution
Before I read this book, I wasn’t aware that I was a creationist. But Matt Ridley tells me I am,…
All in the name of science: three young naturalists go on an Amazonian killing-spree
John Hemming is our greatest living scholar-explorer. He is best known for his extraordinary first book The Conquest of the…
From water-dwelling sponges to face-eating hyenas: the whole of life is in this book
‘The meaning of life’, announces Simon Barnes in the opening pages of his new book, ‘is life, and the purpose…
