Annie’s Box by Randal Keynes, Fourth Estate, £16.99, ISBN
1841150606
ANNIE’S BOX is a family memoir, a form that usually appeals more to
those within the family than without it. But when the family name is Darwin,
interest quickens.
Darwinalia is well-ploughed territory, so any author needs something
distinctive. What Randal Keynes, a great-great grandson of Charles Darwin,
offers us is the book’s eponymous box—actually a writing case.
Annie, the Darwins’ eldest daughter, died when she was 10. You soon realise
that the box itself conceals no revelatory secrets. But the box, and its humdrum
contents, symbolise Charles’s deep…
