Part memoir, part biography, part book about creative writing and what really makes a novel, and also a brave book about failure, This Is Not a Book About Charles Darwin is a unique and compelling book. Emma Darwin wanted to take the road less travelled: there were the fascinating real lives of Erasmus Darwin and the Lunar Society; Tom Wedgwood the first photographer; Julia Wedgwood, who as a writer and intellectual was ranked with George Eliot; Ralph Vaughan Williams and his extraordinary love story; and poet and Communist John Cornford, first Briton to be killed in the Spanish Civil War.

Darwin wanted to grow a novel out of the science and the art – the creativity – that runs through 250 years of her family. This Is Not a Book About Charles Darwin tells the story of those riches through the lens of Darwin’s struggle. It is a wry, witty and honest account of her journey through her family as she sought to write the novel.

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