T.H. Huxley and the fight for Darwinism.
"In so proudly claiming descent from monkey, ape or baboon, does he do so on his grandfather's side or his grandmother's?"
This now legendary challenge was thrown to T.H. Huxley by the Bishop of Oxford in 1860 and reduced a British Association meeting to chaos.
The dramatic events leading up to this remark are re-enacted in tonight's Horizon about Thomas Henry Huxley, father of the famous Huxley family, originator of the term "agnostic", man of science, educator and the most famous protagonist of "The Origin of Species".
Without Huxley's ardent and brilliant campaigning, it is conceivable that Victorian society would have ignored Darwin's theory of evolution, and rejected the most significant idea of the 19th century.

(What happened when a scientist tried to make a monkey of the Bishop of Oxford: page 16)
(Colour)