Darwin's Island

The Origin of Species may be the most famous book in science but its stature tends to obscure much of Charles Darwin s other works. His visit to the Galapagos lasted just five weeks and on his return he never left Britain again. Darwin spent forty years working on the plants, animals and people of his native land and wrote over six million words on topics as different as dogs, insect-eating plants, orchids, earthworms, apes and human emotion. Together they laid the foundations of modern biology.

In this beautifully written, witty and illuminating book, Steve Jones explores the domestic Darwin, tracing the great naturalist s journey across Britain: a voyage not of the body, but of the mind.

Long-listed for Samuel Johnson Prize 2009 (UK)

“ 'Steve Jones who in ALMOST LIKE A WHALE successfully rewrote Darwin in the 21st century, reminds us in DARWIN'S ISLAND that Darwin did actually write 19 other books which are full of insight into the human condition and into the flora and fauna of Britain - hence his title. If you were to read one new book on Darwin this year, this should be it' Christopher Hudson, DAILY MAIL 'Darwin's theory of evolution is often imagined to be the result of his voyage to the Galapagos Islands aboard HMS Beagle. But as Steve Jones points out at the start of his enthralling book, he spent only five weeks in the Galapagos, whereas for 40 years following the Beagle's return he explored the biology and geology of Britain, crisscrossing the land in search of specimens that he took back to his experimental station and family home at Down House in Kent. Darwin's Island takes us through the projects and experiments of those 40 years. Jones's chapter on climbing plants is both a masterpiece of science writing and a revelation of Darwin's almost poetic sensitivity. Besides disclosing the beautiful ingenuities of Darwin's thought, Jones updates Darwin's science. With dazzling versatility he traverses the field of modern genetics to show how evolutionary theory has become fact, and how DNA evidence, together with the fossil record, has allowed Darwin's speculations about past biological events to be confirmed, extended and given approximate dates. As Jones accumulates his evidence, the vision of the relatedness of all life becomes more and more breathtaking. I have never read a book that made me gasp with amazement so often' John Carey SUNDAY TIMES 'Wow, Goodness me! Fancy that! Well I never! This is what you will be saying at every other page of Steve Jones's brilliant, remarkable, profound and deeply unsettling book. Your reactions otherwise will be shock and awe: shock at how far down the road to hell humankind has pushed its handcart, and awe at the light way Jones wears his formidable learning. If there is one book to be read at this bicentenary of Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of his The Origin of Species, then this must be it' Andy Barclay IRISH TIMES 'Darwin's Island fills in the details of four decades that followed his five years on HMS Beagle. A professor of genetics and a gifted writer who has already successfully updated Darwin for the 21st century in an earlier book, Steve Jones is ideally placed to provide a rounded view of this oeuvre. During those decades of hard work in Down House, Kent, Darwin "underwent a second great voyage: not of the body but of the mind". This is the best of the Darwin anniversary books' Roger Highfield DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Jones's own predominant interest is in biology, but he doesn't neglect that past lived world impacted or crumbled in the strata of the earth because, as he sees, those lost aeons and once-living forms were essential to Darwin's theories to work. In Darwin's Island, Steve Jones places his work in a continuum that reaches into the present of scientific research, as well as emphasising its extraordinary prescience. The delight in reading Jones's book is in the zest with which he explores facts and sets them together to yield more than anyone could have expected, in true Darwinian style' Gillian Beer GUARDIAN 'Jones makes his point with a tour of topics that Darwin explored in his fleet of mature works, steering away from the flagships of The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, Jones cross-fertilises Darwin's pioneering studies of animals' expressions, orchids' contrivances and earthworms' exertions, among other subjects with his own vivid and eclectic resume of what science has discovered about these and much more since' Marek Kohn INDEPENDENT 'In the sea”

a meandering, but ultimately enlightening, natural-history lesson.' - The Economist

Steve Jones is Professor of Genetics at University College London and the president of the Galton Institute. He delivered the BBC Reith Lectures in 1991, appears frequently on radio and television and is a regular columnist for the Daily Telegraph.

The Origin of Species may be the most famous book in science but its stature tends to obscure much of Charles Darwin s other works. His visit to the Galapagos lasted just five weeks and on his return he never left Britain again. Darwin spent forty years working on the plants, animals and people of his native land and wrote over six million words on topics as different as dogs, insect-eating plants, orchids, earthworms, apes and human emotion. Together they laid the foundations of modern biology. In this beautifully written, witty and illuminating book, Steve Jones explores the domestic Darwin, tracing the great naturalist s journey across Britain: a voyage not of the body, but of the mind.

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