Huxley: The devil's disciple

T.H. Huxley (1825-1895) - "Darwin's bulldog" - led a far more fascinating and outgoing life than the reclusive Darwin. He did battle with God and Gladstone, sat on royal commissions and campaigned for elementary education. He carried Darwin's fight to the public and outraged the old order with his talk of the material basis of life. It was a life lived at high speed and to the full, embracing all the Victorian hopes and fears. Desperately trying to scratch a living in his young days, he suffered mental collapses as he failed to bring his fiancee over from Sydney (he raised the cash after four years). The author of this book uses the life of Huxley to illustrate and illuminate the second - and far more turbulent - half of the 19th century. Adrian Desmond is the author of "Darwin" which won the James Tait Black Prize in Britain, the Comisso Prize in Italy and the Watson Davis Prize in America.