CHARLES DARWIN Victorian Mythmaker

Wilson offers a critical rather than wholly laudatory biography of the scientist who brought the theory of evolution into public awareness. Narrator Richard Burnip has a pleasantly fluid, agile British voice with just the right touch of bemused irony for both the subject and the author's style. He sets off quotations with a slightly deeper tone but doesn't give the various speakers distinct voices. The main drawback of this production is Burnip's almost painfully deliberate pacing. Whether Darwin is clambering about in the Galapagos or confined to a London sickbed, Burnip maintains a steady, though urbanely inflected and mellifluous, measure. C.M.A. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine [Published: MARCH 2018]