Richard Keynes (1919–2010)

This book, written by a great-grandson of Darwin, gives a detailed account of Darwin's travels in the Beagle, plus some analysis of the events and findings.
Keynes gets much of the detail from the various journals of Darwin and others on the Beagle and brings the narrative together in a useful manner. The style is low-key, with no attempt to extract some startling new inference from the record. Indeed, he makes sure to debunk some over-excited frothings of previous writers.
HHardly a page-turner, but well done. Read Jan 2013.… (mere)

The voyage of the HMS Beagle is largely associated with one man - Charles Darwin. This is unfortunate, as his association was only one element of an epic series of voyages by the vessel. Keynes, a descendent of Darwin, does the vessel and its crew justice by including within The Beagle Record a selection of text and images which can only serve to excite interest in other apects of the famous expediton, apart from what Darwin was up to. What I found most exciting about this book was the large number of illustration by Conrad Martens, an English landscape artist who subsequently settled in Australia and made a living selling watercolours in the picturesque style. Martens was artist on the expediton, having replace Augustus Earle, and the work of both features in this handsome edition. The mixture of heretofore unseen images, extracts from unpublished manuscripts and sections of the published accounts of the expedition make this book immensely readable and an important addition to the story of Beagle related works.… (mere)