On the 166th anniversary (24 November 2025) of the publication of the world’s most famous science book (what are the other serious rivals for this title?), a few short reflections on the work that made your name a global badge of courageous learning.

Firstly, the title: it’s something of a mouthful.

‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life’. I think I read that you (and your publisher, John Murray) toyed with at least seven different options. Nowadays, many will refer to your book as ‘the origin of species’. Not many will have read its title fully – never mind its contents. And yet, the ideas created new worlds of thinking.

Secondly: the ‘great delay’.

Famously, you waited 20 years to publish. Two decades. Was this a matter of deliberation? ‘Should I? Shouldn’t I?’ Was it a matter of fear? Or was it a scholarly commitment to getting it right? Commenting on the effect of this lengthy keeping under wraps, you said you didn’t regret holding it back. Indeed, that it was all the better for the waiting.

In these times of instant, unfiltered communication, the astonishing length of this wait strikes me yet harder. And the risk too, surely – as others were also onto these ideas – Alfred Russell Wallace, for example. Others could have eclipsed you, Charles. How did you hold onto something so explosive for so long?!

Thirdly: the courage.

This surely relates to the delay. You knew that what you were proposing was seismic. You knew that when it was finally released, it would catapult you into unquantifiable territory. This third thing then, is a thing of courage. To travel, to gather evidence, to consider and ruminate, and write new worlds. And to have the courage to publish.

Fourthly: your own origins. At Shrewsbury School.

Although it is said that you found your school days at Shrewsbury hard going (too much Latin, not enough free thinking), I like to imagine that you would relish the contemporary whole person education on offer today. You would love the ‘serious fun’, the dialogue, the championing of the individual. As it was, the educational grounding you were given provided the boundaries and limits against which you ultimately pushed. Perhaps the relative confinement of formal education back then was essential to your origins as a thinker?

Storms followed you. Billions of words have been written and said about your masterwork. I add these tiny droplets to this vast ocean. 166 years on, I celebrate the ground-breaking power of the 20 year-delayed 150,000 words that set sail under your epic title:  ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life’.

166 years on, children from all around the world can come to Shrewsbury School to find our more – and visit our unique collection of Darwin-related items. Including first editions of your most famous work…

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