Judges go ape over status of Darwin's village
With its carefully tended gardens, neat cottages and two pubs offering "full Sunday lunch", the commuter village of Downe would seem to have little in common with the grandeur of the Taj Mahal or the pyramids of Giza. But thanks to its 162-year association with Charles Darwin, the well-heeled village and a substantial chunk of affluent greenbelt in the south-east London borough of Bromley could soon be rubbing shoulders with breathtaking monuments under the shared status of a World Heritage Site. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport confirmed yesterday that it has selected Downe, where Darwin lived for more than 40 years, and the surrounding land where he conducted many of his studies, to be put forward for the Unesco award in 2007 - ahead of other shortlisted locations including the Lake District and Stratford-Upon-Avon. The proposed heritage site will be centred on Down House, a Georgian pile once described by Darwin himself as an "oldish and ugly building", where he wrote his revolutionary work on natural selection, The Origin of Species.
This is excellent news. Good luck to Downe with its bid for World Heritage status (and to Liverpool—the greatest city on earth—with its own bid).