The Friends of Charles Darwin

Now we are 30

The Friends of Charles Darwin were founded 30 years ago today, on 2nd March 1994. Happy birthday to us!

It all started in the Red Lion public house, at Parkgate on the Wirral, when my pal and regular drinking partner Nigel ‘Fitz’ Longhurst and I, decided it was outrageous Charles Darwin had never appeared on a British bank note. So, on this day in 1994, we dashed off a letter to the Chief Cashier of the Bank of England, asking why on earth not, signing ourselves Friends of Charles Darwin. We later allowed others to start adding their names as Friends of Charles Darwin on this dedicated website.

I've always said I don't think our campaign had much to do with Darwin eventually appearing on the (sadly, now defunct) Bank of England Darwin £10 note, but we still treated it as a cause for major celebration.

Nigel ‘Fitz’ Longhurst, FCD (L) and a youthful Richard Carter, FCD (R), celebrating in the only way they knew how.

Fitz died ten years ago, in June 2014. I was honoured to be asked to officiate at his funeral, and made sure a crisp Darwin tenner accompanied him in his grave.

Since then, I’ve kept the Friends of Charles Darwin brand going with no particular campaign in mind, not least because, in the alarming post-truth era we seem to have entered, I think Charles Darwin could still do with all the friends he can get.

I’m currently writing a book inspired by Darwin, and am investing most of my Friends of Charles Darwin efforts in my newsletters. So, if you haven’t done so already, please subscribe.

Thirty years! When did I start counting in decades? Here’s to the next few years at least!

The Darwin bicentennial oak, 15 years on

Fifteen years ago today, I planted the Darwin Bicentennial Oak in my garden. I am pleased to report that it is still doing well.

Darwin Bicentennial Oak, 2009 (before) — Darwin Bicentennial Oak, 2009 (before planting)

Darwin Bicentennial Oak, 2009 (before planting)

I have now spent fifteen years gathering material for the longest time-lapse movie ever. Or should that be shortest?

The full set!

Thirty years ago, in 1993, I treated myself to the first 8 volumes of Darwin’s Correspondence, which was all that had been published at the time. Ever since, one of my ambitions has been to live long enough to collect the full set. Today, on my 58th birthday, I realised that ambition.

The full 30-volume (31-book) set of the Correspondence of Charles Darwin.

Now there’s the small matter of reading them all. I’m currently half-way through volume 12.

Hello, Kazakhstan! 🇰🇿

I am delighted to announce that the Friends of Charles Darwin have their first member from Kazakhstan: Saudat Alishayeva of Atyrau. Welcome!

We now have members in 106 countries.

The Darwin bicentennial oak, 14 years on

Fourteen years ago today, I planted the Darwin Bicentennial Oak in my garden. I am pleased to report that it is still doing well.

I have now spent fourteen years gathering material for the longest time-lapse movie ever. Or should that be shortest?

A long-desired plan

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve made several small but important improvements to the Friends of Charles Darwin website, pretty much every one of which will go unnoticed by all but the most astute of observers. I’ll spare you the details, other than to say the site now looks more consistent, and I finally managed to track down the source of a problem that was making certain pages far slower than they should have been (which, contrary to all expectations, had nothing to do with any of my own inept programming). So, several minor improvements accumulated over time: how appropriate is that for a site dedicated to Charles Darwin?

The changes are part of a long-desired plan to become less reliant on the outrage manufactories of social media, and to start putting out more stuff both here and on my personal website. This move has been on the cards for quite some time. I’ve made no secret of the fact I would prefer people to follow my websites and newsletters directly, and to cut out the billionaire middlemen. Musk’s recent acquisition and ongoing firebombing of Twitter were not the inspiration for this move, but they provided some much-needed impetus.

I’m not naive enough to think people are going to abandon social media—and neither am I. But I don’t see why I should continue to populate their websites with Darwin-related content, rather than posting it on my own. So, from now on, the plan is to post stuff mainly on my websites and in my newsletters and to link to that stuff via social media.

If you would also like to cut out the middlemen and follow my stuff directly, here are the best ways to do so:

Friends of Charles Darwin stuff:

Subscribe to the Friends of Charles Darwin newsletter
Subscribe to the RSS feed (this includes articles, blog posts, reviews, and newsletters)

Richard Carter stuff:

Subscribe to my Rich Text newsletter
Subscribe to my RSS feed
Follow me on Mastodon (a nice social media site not controlled by billionaires)

Minor improvements over time… Who knows where this might lead?

Friends of Charles Darwin RSS feed has moved…

For technical reasons I won’t bore you with, the canonical URL (web address) for the Friends of Charles Darwin combined RSS ‘metafeed’ (which lists all the site’s latest articles, newsletters, reviews and blog posts) has changed to:

http://friendsofdarwin.com/metafeed.xml

The (non-technical) reason for the change is to make the feed more user-friendly for people who happen to land on the page, but who don’t understand what an RSS feed is for.

The old feed URL should continue to work just fine. But if you’re already subscribed to the feed, you might want to update to the new ‘official’ version.

Apologies for any inconvenience. I’ll try to ensure this doesn’t happen again.