The film does not reflect what I am reading in ‘Charles Darwin, Voyaging. Volume 1 of a Biography’, by Janet Browne, 1995. It was reviewed as ‘the definitive Darwin biography’, by Ernst Mayr, NY Newsday.

This book is written in three parts 1.Collector,2.Traveller,3.Naturalist. But in all those roles he was always self important; either "idle dreamer" or urgently driven. Yet dispassionate and methodical.

It was notable that among the men of the family, atheism was to be kept their secret? So his atheism was imbibed from family attitudes and discussions; easy for a man who was totally indulged and for whom money was not a problem. His father took care of his financial means all his life.I read that he carefully married a much younger besotted cousin who was groomed for the match, to both consolidate the family fortunes and to have children. But… ‘he grew to love her’. That her wealthy father gave her a generous income also, may have helped? She was no trouble.

So Darwin and Emma were not typical ‘real people’ as per modern society.

He was therefore free to live as he wished and publish whatever conclusions and theories that occurred to him, using data from his personal and copious notes, to maintain his status.

As I plough through this tome it seems his greatest gift was public relations. His charisma and reputation was so well crafted that any contrary view was despised. Lack of gratitude to earnest helpers was noted as evident, both on the Beagle and in his publications.

He was indeed cautious, but only as to the acceptable timing, rather than agonising over the implications, nor the testable, repeatable accuracy of his conclusions.

Though Stephen J Gould, NY Review of Books,says of this book ‘It is wonderful and marvellous, even magisterial.’, I think that relates to Ms Browne’s authorship rather than to Mr Darwin.

‘Annie’s Box’ sounds more like a Victorian tearjerker. Using a child’s death to humanise an otherwise self-important person is very sad.

Perhaps Darwin’s charisma needs help.

That was a very interesting review and an excellent comment too! The issue that Darwin and Emma Wedgewood were first cousins and that 3 of their 10 children died is tragic, Annie at 10 years of age. It makes me wonder at the inherited genetic weaknesses of such close marriages. God forbids this by the time of Moses as incest would continue towards increasing genetic problems (mutation load? bad genes matching up?) in offspring. Did Darwin ever realise this possibility? Or did he just convieniently blame God? It makes me wonder about today’s IVF and the children who are produced where the identity of the sperm donor is kept secret etc. I often wonder about a man in Melbourne that I know who has been donating for 4 decades. Do any of those children marry each other? What if they do? It is certainly a weird Brave New World we live in where reproduction has been violently unteathered from what God had graciously intented.

Also I wondered why there was no mention of (‘lower class’) Wallace as he had been sending specimens to Darwin and really pre-empted his writings of Origin (nothing to do with ‘origin’) and the initial paper to the Royal Society was supposedly a joint paper? I appreciated the commentator’s remark that Darwin’s talent was being a great PR man. A contempory parallel would be the hoax of global warming sold to millions by the PR politician Al Gore. It is truly astounding that the hoax of evolution has so captured millions for 150 years and it is a philosophical position with no real evidence to speak of; most people believe it because most people believe it ad nauseum ...