Charles Darwin

I'm not one for traipsing round stately homes, being of the opinion that once you have seen one Queen Anne chair and polished mahogany table you have seen them all. However, when the Woodbridge U3A group planned a visit to Down House – the home of Charles Darwin – I thought this might well be worth a visit. And indeed it was.

The house is important because it was there that Darwin not only wrote his masterpiece, On the Origin of Species, but applied scientific reasoning and performed numerous experiments to confirm that his ideas were sound.

The time scales are surprising. Darwin moved into the very substantial Down House in 1842, but this was a full five years after his journey on the Beagle. Perhaps, even more surprisingly, it was only after another seventeen years of reflection (and probably worry) on what he had observed on that voyage that Darwin published his greatest work.

150 years after Charles Darwin first presented his theory to fellow scientists and amidst year-long Darwin celebrations in 2009, Re:Design is a fascinating and timely dramatisation of 30 years correspondence between Charles Darwin, Kent, England and Asa Gray in Boston, USA.

We've hired a display case at the entrance to Ipswich Central Library for the week including Darwin Day (12th February), the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin.

Offers of help to set it up welcome.