These days, Richard Dawkins is so much a popular spokesman for enlightenment values, a voluble and unembarrassable critic of religious belief that it might be as well to remember what it was that gave him his public eminence in the first place. It’s 30 years since the first publication of that splendid book, The Selfish Gene, now being reissued in a special edition, and one of the very surprising things about it is that in many ways it has become more controversial as time has gone on, and in ways which don’t reflect at all well on the development of society.

Blackwell Bookshop

Purchase your copy here, 10% off RRP