This year sees a celebration of all-things Darwin, because he was born 200 years ago and because he published his epoch-making book On the Origin of Species 150 years ago, and then went on to put apes in all of our family trees with his Descent of Man, published in 1871.

Darwin’s Sacred Cause is about the historical context of his body of work, redefined by Desmond and Moore from their detective work on masses of unpublished letters by Darwin and his family members, a plethora of other documents such as ships’ logs and diaries, and rare contemporary works on human origins and race. They have used this information convincingly to demonstrate that the scientific and moral thrusts of Darwin’s greatest work were an attempt to confirm his truly held belief that all races were fully and equally human. In Darwin’s day, those who promoted slavery argued that blacks and whites were separate species, with the whites somehow superior.

Darwin disagreed strongly with this view, taking abolition as his “sacred cause”, and developing his theories to show that we all have common ancestors. Darwin thought that the assertion that man was superior to all other species was an “arrogant” view, and that our realisation that all animals and plants had a common origin would emancipate us from creationist shackles.

As you might expect from the above, the book is packed with fascinating details of his journeys, his observations of the awful truths of the slave trade, his contacts with anti-slavery activists, and his step-by-step progress towards his grand unifying theory Despite suffering a little from detail overload, I enjoyed the book a lot on a first read-through and I am sure that I will dip into it again from time to time. It’s a masterful work.

It ably portrays Darwin’s sincere humanity in reaching his conclusions and his painful reserve at making them widely known. The authors have succeeded in showing exactly how this modest member of Victorian minor gentry has become an icon and why we are celebrating his achievements this year.

I warmed to Darwin during my reading, and feel that the next time I pick up a £10 note I will have a much better understanding of the solemnly bearded man portrayed on its reverse.

* In His Own Words: a free public exhibition about Darwin, continues at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History in Keble Road, Oxford, all year.