The evolution of the great Darwin debate

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Wherever you are in the country, some sort of celebration of Charles Darwin will soon be in full swing to mark his anniversary year. Even if you just consider February 12, the biologist’s 200th birthday, there will be events in London, Newcastle, Bristol, Edinburgh, Hull, Shrewsbury, Cardiff, Elgin, Cambridge, Bath, Bolton, Ipswich and many other parts of the country.
The National History Museum will unveil a new artwork on its ceiling; Darwin’s alma mater – Christ’s College, Cambridge – will host a £5,000-a-head charity dinner, attended by the Duke of Edinburgh and Sir David Attenborough, to fund research links with the Galapagos Islands, where much of Darwin’s research was carried out; Richard Dawkins and Lord Harries, the former Bishop of Oxford, will debate each other at the Institute of Biology in London, in an echo of the famous battle over Darwinism between Bishop Wilberforce and Thomas Huxley; and there will even be a new set of commemorative stamps issued.
However, “Darwin Day” is only the start. The National History Museum will be continuing its blockbuster Darwin exhibition until April, with other shows at a dozen or so venues, most notably the British Library, the National Portrait Gallery, and Darwin’s former home, Down House in Kent. There will be a week-long festival in Cambridge, and the Wellcome Trust has collaborated with the Royal Botanic Gardens to send a free set of Darwin experiments and activities to every school in the country.
Worldwide, the British Council will also be organising activities to promote Darwin’s life and work.
Even those who never set foot in a museum will find the great man and his legacy hard to avoid as 2009 rolls on. Creation, a big-budget Darwin biopic starring Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly, will arrive in cinemas later in the year, but the BBC is also producing a vast array of programmes across its television and radio channels. The highest-profile will be David Attenborough’s new documentary, Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life, which will be broadcast on BBC1 on Sunday, February 1, and the latest blockbuster series from the team behind Planet Earth, a 10-part epic narrated by Sir David that will simply be called Life. Other BBC shows will examine every aspect of Darwin’s life, work and impact, including a three-part BBC2 series in March called Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, which will be presented by Andrew Marr.
If you find yourself suffering from Darwin fatigue by then, take care to keep your head down later in the year, too: November 24 marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, which will bring another flood of events.