Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin’s contribution to Patagonia’s grim history
Characterising native tribes as ‘naked, painted, shivering, hideous savages’ proved no less calamitous for their survival as Argentina’s efforts to exterminate them, says Matthew Carr
Survival of the hottest: evolution’s fun side has been long overlooked
The theory of evolution is dominated by the utilitarian logic of natural selection: adapt or die, survival of the fittest.…
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
Dangerous myth-makers
Racism lies at the heart of the Victorian rewrite of the creation myth. What happened in prehistory, according to Thomas…
High life
Gstaad Good manners aside, what I miss nowadays is a new, intelligent, finely acted movie. Never have I seen…
Flights of fancy
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…
For better, for worse
Before I read this book, I wasn’t aware that I was a creationist. But Matt Ridley tells me I am,…
Three men in the Basin
John Hemming is our greatest living scholar-explorer. He is best known for his extraordinary first book The Conquest of the…
The lion lies down with the worm
‘The meaning of life’, announces Simon Barnes in the opening pages of his new book, ‘is life, and the purpose…
