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FOR someone who came up with what has justly been described as 鈥渢he single best idea anyone has ever had鈥�, Darwin has been vilified to an extraordinary degree. Clearly, his achievement of uniting all species under a common ancestor outraged millions, and still does.

Adrian Desmond and have come up with something astonishing: a radical new explanation of the force that drove Darwin. I hesitate to call this work definitive, as that was how the same authors鈥� epic biography was described in 1991. I wouldn鈥檛 have thought it possible to further elevate the standing Darwin and his work already have, but by trawling through reams of correspondence Desmond and Moore have done it. This book spectacularly humanises him, showing how he was motivated by the great moral cause of his day: opposition to slavery.

Darwin鈥檚 family was passionately abolitionist and he continually mixed with people devoted to the cause. On his travels aboard the Beagle he was outraged by the slavery he encountered. The suffering he saw during those five years left a bigger impression than, say, the Galapagos finches.

While we know Darwin鈥檚 ideas on overpopulation and competition were influenced by , few have appreciated how, in Desmond and Moore鈥檚 words, his 鈥渆mancipation of all life from its Creative chains鈥� was driven by a passionate desire to see slaves liberated from their masters. And while the industrial revolution is recognised as a major influence, the effect of the gigantic and powerful slave trade has been ignored. Yet arguments about the races were at the forefront of intellectual and political debate, and supporters of the slave trade justified their position with the pseudoscientific notion that the different races of humans were different species.

After the Beagle voyage, Darwin filled notebooks with his ideas, and in 1837 sketched a genealogical pedigree, his earliest thoughts on the origin of species. The authors show how this was triggered by his belief in the common descent of all humans. It wasn鈥檛 until 1871 that he published his ideas in full form. If this book has the impact it deserves, look forward to another celebration in 2021, on the 150th anniversary of The Descent of Man. Darwin was not merely a meticulous scientist, he was a passionate humanitarian.

See everything in our pick of the Darwin 200 books