Darwin’s armada. Iain McCalman. 2009.

Darwin’s Armada tells the stories of Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Joseph Hooker and Alfred Wallace, four young naturalists, each of whom voyaged to the Southern Hemisphere in search of adventure and scientific fame. Like Darwin, his contemporaries braved danger, privation and the rigours of life on board sailing ships to reach the remote lands of South America, Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, South East Asia and Antarctica.

Their discoveries led them, on their return to Britain, to befriend Charles Darwin and, crucially, to influence the publication of his Origin of the Species. For the next forty years they became passionate campaigners in the savage war of ideas that Darwin’s theory of evolution unleashed, each of them helping to transform the face of science and of religious and social thought.