AN Wilson: Why Darwin was wrong

AN Wilson’s charming, 1840s terraced house sits on the brow of a hill, overlooking Camden Market in north London. Walking through the market recently, he was much taken with a particular stall.

‘There was a T-shirt for sale in the market, saying, ‘Too stupid to understand science? Why not try religion?” he says, laughing, ‘I like that. The people who think they’ve demolished religion by these scientific discussions think they’re in the same category. The questions posed by religion are very different from the questions posed by science.’

Wilson has just walked into a classic religion/science row with his new biography of Charles Darwin. The book certainly doesn’t pull its punches. The first line declares, ‘Darwin was wrong.’ Wilson goes on to rip into Darwin’s theory of evolution, eviscerating two of the theory’s foundations: the survival of the fittest and the idea that species evolved in slow, gradual changes, rather than the leaps Wilson believes in.

The book has divided critics.