ala Z Whittles, £18.99 Charles Darwin spent two years at Edinburgh University, from 1825 to 1827. During that time, Derry argues, he might not have attended lectures, and might have found individual lecturers boring, but he did imbibe much of the argument and tenor and atmosphere of a place at the forefront of modern medicine and science. Darwin might have attended just a year or two before the scandal of Burke and Hare, but Edinburgh was making waves in the scientific community without their help and Darwin’s father and grandfather both attended the university, Derry, a scientist with a PhD in African Ecology, has written a detailed and specialised account, not so much of Darwin's time at Edinburgh but of his legacy for scientists working there. Not accessible enough for the general reader.