A man who believes in Darwin as fervently as he hates God

In the downstairs loo of Richard Dawkins’s house in Oxford there’s a framed award from the Royal Society; to remind visitors, or maybe Richard himself, that here lives a man of some purpose, some gravitas and intellectual clout. The Faraday prize is given to those who communicate science with brilliance and verve to the scientifically ignorant, thick general public. Richard has done a lot of that, ever since The Selfish Gene in 1976. It is his job these days; he holds the Simonyi chair in the public understanding of science at Oxford University. His latest wife, the actress Lalla Ward, has done her bit too, helping out various bereft timelords in Dr Who.

Richard himself is a bit of a timelord, if you like. A scientist forever battling an intractable foe — the daleks of religion. He is probably more famous these days for kicking God around than for the hard science of his earlier work (a fact he accepts, with some misgivings); he is our most belligerent and brilliant atheist.