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BBC World Drama: Like Confessing a Murder

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Like Confessing a Murder

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Drama based on the correspondence of Charles Darwin. Starring Alex Jennings.

Drama based on the correspondence of Charles Darwin and his contemporaries, showing a very different man from the popular image. Starring Alex Jennings and Oona Beeson.

To mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and 150 years since the publication of the still controversial “Origin of the Species”, this specially commissioned drama is based entirely on Charles and Emma Darwin’s own words and correspondence.  Behind the controversial public persona, Darwin was an affectionate family man, fully engaged – sometimes heartbreakingly so – in the lives of his wife, Emma and their children.  Emma was not without her own concerns about the spiritual implications of some of her husband’s ideas, fearing they would undermine his Christian faith.  How could he reconcile these apparent contradictions – which, years before the publication of the book, when outlining the theory to a friend, Darwin had said felt “like confessing a murder”.   The letters recreate the domestic context from which one of the world’s most influential ideas arose.

Staring Alex Jennings as Charles Darwin and Oona Beeson as Emma.

Directed and produced by Penny Boreham and Ruth Evans.  A Ruth Evans Production.

Duratin: 58 minutes.
Unavailable as archive or download.

BBC World Service

Drama based on the correspondence of Charles Darwin and his contemporaries, showing a v...

Drama based on the correspondence of Charles Darwin and his contemporaries, showing a very different man from the popular image.

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