After years of not letter-writing, I was prompted by a Guardian editorial concerning the 50th anniversary of the publication of “The Selfish Gene” to send the following. It was not published.
I once devised crossword clues for Richard Dawkins as either “Rash Darwin Dick” or “Darwin’s hard dick gets excited after spending a penny”. A great writer and conceptual scientist, he has stuck to his materialistic guns even though that meant failing to move with the times. He shaped a generation’s thinking in much the same way as Darwin did. However, in both cases they were wrong in their emphases.
Hugh Dower
Nottingham