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Darwin's bulldog, they called me. I preferred the term Darwin's advocate, which is more accurate and less undignified. Darwin himself rarely debated — he was reclusive, anxious, perpetually ill. Someone had to stand in public and answer the objections.

At Oxford in June 1860, Bishop Wilberforce asked me, in a tone of polished sarcasm, whether it was through my grandfather or my grandmother that I claimed descent from an ape. I replied that I would not be ashamed to have a monkey for my ancestor, but I would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used his gifts to obscure the truth.

This exchange has been dramatised beyond recognition. The audience was not uniformly against Wilberforce. The bishop was a skilled orator. One woman fainted. Several clergymen stormed out. But the naturalists in the room understood what had happened: the argument had been made in public, clearly, and not retracted. You cannot unring that bell.