The Friends of Charles Darwin

Blog

  • Arkaeology

    Holy Crap!! was my reaction in February when I read that one of the world’s leading marine archaeologists, Robert Prescott of St Andrews University, was “quietly confident” that he and his team had found Charles Darwin’s ship, HMS Beagle buried in the Essex marshes. Holy Crap (without the exclamation marks) was also my reaction yesterday…

  • Are You Calling My Fox Terrier Stupid?

    In what he later said turned out to be one of his most popular essays, The Case of the Creeping Fox Terrier Clone in his book Bully for Brontosaurus, the late Stephen Jay Gould explained how the size of the earliest known member of the horse family, hyracotherium (or eohippus to non-pedants), was invariably compared…

  • Let’s Not Call Them Hobbits

    The discovery of the remains of a previously unknown member of our own genus, Homo, on the remote Indonesian island of Flores is creating quite a stir. And rightly so: Homo floresiensis is a genuinely delightful find. Measuring a mere one metre in height, the remains of the first H. floresiensis to be uncovered were originally…

  • A Far More Satisfactory Theory

    The legendary American folk singer Pete Seeger sounds like a thoroughly good chap: not only did he actively participate in the American civil rights movement of the 1960s, and inspire an excellent album by Bruce Springsteen, but, according to a recent story in the Guardian newspaper, nowadays he’ll spend hours in [the Beacon Sloop] club,…

  • Hello, Côte d´Ivoire! 🇨🇮

    The Friends of Charles Darwin have their first member from Côte d´Ivoire.

  • Hello, Faroe Islands! 🇫🇴

    I am delighted to announce that the Friends of Charles Darwin have their first members from the Faroe Islands.

  • A nail-biting, not entirely historically accurate event from the Voyage of the Beagle

    I trust everyone is as excited as I am at the prospect of seeing none other than Charles Darwin appear in an Aardman Animation feature.

  • Happy Birthday to us!

    The Friends of Charles Darwin came into being 18 years ago today, with the sending of this letter

  • A miserable birthday aboard HMS Beagle

    On Charles Darwin’s miserable 23rd birthday (his first aboard HMS Beagle).

  • The Dickens Connection

    Dickens, FitzRoy and how a tragic loss at sea spurred efforts to forecast storms.

  • Will a new HMS Beagle set sail in 2013?

    The Beagle Project’s Peter McGrath, writing in the Guardian Notes & Theories blog.

  • Friends of Charles Darwin banned in Turkey?

    This site would appear to be currently unavailable in Turkey – to children, at least.