Christopher Hart
Halfway There
Middle Age: A Natural History
By David Bainbridge
Portobello Books 317pp £14.99 order from our bookshop
David Bainbridge describes himself as a vet from Suffolk, who ‘has a belly, eschews reading glasses, drives a sports car and seems not to have heard of clichés’. He is a strong believer in evolutionary biology: the science that seeks to explain that we are the way we are because of Darwinian causes and effects. Some might dispute that human beings are subject to such things any more, as other animals are, since we are complex, supranatural creatures with things called culture, science, and possibly free will. Nevertheless, Bainbridge’s evolutionary perspective offers many consolations to those of us around forty – or even a bit beyond.
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