Darwin: A Life in Poems - Tapa blanda

"Exquisite, precise and moving poems... Once I started reading I could not put it down until I had reached the end, and then I turned back for the pleasure of reading again" (Claire Tomalin)

"A fascinating, very rich book... With sympathy and grace, Padel moves deftly between between science, love and family; between the vast processes of evolution and a personal life" (Sean O'Brien)

"Daring and exciting, brilliant and subtle, stunning and deeply impressive... a lesson to biographers and poets alike" (Colm Toibin)

"Ambitious... shows her extraordinary talent" (Observer)

"Moments of Darwin's life captured with an economy and fluency that prosaic biographers might envy" (Spectator)

In these extraordinary poems, using multiple viewpoints - from Darwin himself, to his beloved wife Emma, and even, at one point, the orangutang at London Zoo - Ruth Padel illuminates the development of Darwin's thought, the drama of the discovery of evolution, and the fluctuating emotions of Darwin the husband, the naturalist and the tender father, in a powerful tribute to her famous ancestor.

Shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Poetry Award.