When the Origins of Species was published on 24 November 1859, its author, Charles Darwin, was near the end of a nine-week stay in the remote Yorkshire village of Ilkley. He had come for the 'water cure'- a regime of cold baths and wet sheets - and for relaxation. But he used his time in Ilkley to shore up support, through extensive correspondence, for the extraordinary theory that the Origin would put before the world: evolution by natural selection. In Darwin in Ilkley, Mike Dixon and Gregory Radick bring to life Victorian Ilkley and the dramas of body and mind that marked Darwin's visit.
I am here hydropathising and coming to life again after having finished my accursed book.' So wrote Charles Darwin to his friend T H Huxley in October 1859 from the Yorkshire village of Ilkley. Darwin was in Ilkley taking the 'water cure', and over the next weeks, in between fresh-air walks, cold-water baths, and time with his family, he began to prepare for the publication of that 'accursed book', On the Origin of Species. Putting before the public his theory of evolution by natural selection, the book would make Darwin one of the most famous - and, for some, notorious - scientific figures of all time. In Darwin in Ilkley, Mike Dixon and Gregory Radick bring to life the dramas of body and mind that marked Darwin's visit, together with an evocation of the Dales setting where Darwin - though beset by illness - began the defence of his evolution theory.
