Darwin’s Island: The Galapagos in the Garden of England

by Steve Jones , published by Little Brown, priced £20

EVEN the most ardent of enthusiasts for the work of Charles Darwin must be feeling pretty Darwinned out by now.

In this, the 200th anniversary of the great naturalists’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his masterpiece, On The Origin of Species, he’s been everywhere. On television and radio series, in books and magazines, we’ve surely heard everything about his voyage to the Galapagos and how it prompted him to work on his theory of natural selection. So do we need any more? Well, yes, in short. In Darwin’s Island, Steve Jones takes us effortlessly through his subject’s other, less celebrated works, in which he investigated, catalogued and described the insects, plants and animals of Britain. Jones, one of the country’s top science writers, is a delightful read, with compelling enthusiasm for his subject and plenty of contemporary references.