The Voyage of the Beagle is an astonishingly good book.

Over the past few days I've been helping a TV production company put together its pitch for the BBC about our Voyage restaged and have been re-reading the Voyage of the Beagle. A a result, I've been reminded just what a great, prolific and inspired scientist and humanitarian Charles Darwin was. Most pages have enough observations and discoveries to keep an average scientist in work for months, and his work covered geology, marine biology, botany, macro- and microscopic zoology, ecology, animal behaviour, human behaviour, geography, climate. He did much of it working in 10 x11 foot cabin with instruments and conditions that would make a modern scientist scream, often seasick and more than once at risk of being killed. Science was in its infancy, and the world was wide open for 'natural historians', especially those lucky enough to have a wealthy father prepared to fund them on a round-the-world naturalizing and rock-bashing voyage. But it wa a hell of an achievement, and the Voyage is still a great read.