Uploaded October 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Alison Bashford FBA, author of An Intimate History of Evolution, in conversation with Professor Sujit Sivasundaram.
In his early twenties, poor, wracked with depression, stranded in the Coral Sea on the seemingly endless survey mission of HMS Rattlesnake, hopelessly in love with the young Englishwoman Henrietta Heathorn, Thomas Henry Huxley was a nobody. And yet together he and Henrietta would return to London and go on to found one of the great intellectual and scientific dynasties of their age.
The Huxley family through four generations profoundly shaped how we see ourselves. In innumerable fields observing both nature and culture, they worked as scientists, novelists, mystics, film-makers, poets and educators.
Alison Bashford’s new book, An Intimate History of Evolution, interweaves the Huxleys’ momentous public achievements with their private triumphs and tragedies.
Their speciality was evolution in all its forms – at the grandest level of species, deep time, the Earth, and at the most personal and intimate. They shaped great organizations – the Natural History Museum, Imperial College, the London Zoo, UNESCO, the World Wildlife Fund – and they shaped fundamentally how we see ourselves, as individuals and as a species, one among many.
The author talks about this extraordinary family and learn how much we owe – for better or worse – to the unceasing curiosity, self-absorption and enthusiasms of this small, strange group of men and women.
Alison Bashford FBA, author of An Intimate History of Evolution, in conversation with Professor Sujit Sivasundaram.
In his early twenties, poor, wracked with depression, stranded in the Coral Sea on the seemingly endless survey mission of HMS Rattlesnake, hopelessly in love with the young Englishwoman Henrietta Heathorn, Thomas Henry Huxley was a nobody. And yet together he and Henrietta would return to London and go on to found one of the great intellectual and scientific dynasties of their age.
The Huxley family through four generations profoundly shaped how we see ourselves. In innumerable fields observing both nature and culture, they worked as scientists, novelists, mystics, film-makers, poets and educators.
Alison Bashford’s new book, An Intimate History of Evolution, interweaves the Huxleys’ momentous public achievements with their private triumphs and tragedies.
Their speciality was evolution in all its forms – at the grandest level of species, deep time, the Earth, and at the most personal and intimate. They shaped great organizations – the Natural History Museum, Imperial College, the London Zoo, UNESCO, the World Wildlife Fund – and they shaped fundamentally how we see ourselves, as individuals and as a species, one among many.
The author talks about this extraordinary family and learn how much we owe – for better or worse – to the unceasing curiosity, self-absorption and enthusiasms of this small, strange group of men and women.
