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Review: The Young Charles Darwin by Keith Thomson

Forget the common image of Darwin as a bearded old man – what was he like in his early "slacker" years?
Review: The Young Charles Darwin by Keith Thomson

IT HAS always irked me that Darwin is known by the iconic image of him as a bearded ancient being, when his world-changing ideas came to him as a virile young man. Happily, this book redresses the balance.

We see how he was a mediocre student, a “slacker” at university even though he read voraciously. Highly sensitive, introspective and obsessive – he made lists of everything, and it has – he eventually pushed an idea to its logical conclusion and changed the world forever.

See everything in our pick of the Darwin 200 books

Keith Thomson

Yale University Press

Topics: Books and art / Charles Darwin / Evolution