An Appetite for Wonder, by Richard Dawkins – review

It is peculiarly apt that the author of this autobiography should be the man who coined that now fashionable term ‘meme’ — so long as it is written ‘me me’. His name is shown so large on the cover that one might miss the title printed below it. On the opening page he tells us that his full name is Clinton Richard Dawkins, which ‘serendipitously’ gives him the same initials as those of his greatest hero, Charles Robert Darwin. The time has come, he has decided, to tell the story of his life up to that seminal moment in 1976 when he published the book which made him famous, The Selfish Gene.

He begins by describing where he has come from genetically, going back to the General Clinton who presided over the loss of the American colonies in 1783. More recently we learn about grandfathers, uncles and cousins, who all seem to have led worthy lives, several of them, including his father, in the colonial service.