Richard Dawkins - The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life

I was persuaded to write this book by Anthony Cheetham, founder of Orion Books. The fact that he had moved on before the book was published reflects my unconscionable delay in finishing it. Michael Dover tolerated that delay with humour and fortitude, and always encouraged me by his swift and intelligent understanding of what I was trying to do. The best of his many good decisions was to engage Latha Menon as a freelance editor. As with A Devils Chaplain, Lathas support has been beyond all estimation. Her grasp of the big picture simultaneously with the details, her encyclopaedic knowledge, her love of science and her selfless devotion to promoting it have benefited me, and this book, in more ways than I can count. Others at the publishers helped greatly, but Jennie Condell and the designer, Ken Wilson, went beyond the call of duty.

My research assistant Yan Wong has been intimately involved at every stage of the planning, researching and writing of the book. His resourcefulness and detailed familiarity with modern biology have been matched only by his green fingers with computers. If, here, I have gratefully assumed the role of apprentice, it could be said that he was my apprentice before I was his, for I was his tutor at New College. He then did his doctorate under the supervision of Alan Grafen, once my own graduate student, so I suppose Yan could be called my grandstudent as well as my student. Apprentice or master, Yans contribution has been so great that, for certain tales, I have insisted on adding his name as joint author. When Yan left to cycle across Patagonia, the book in its final stages benefited greatly from Sam Turveys extraordinary knowledge of zoology and his conscientious care in deploying it.

Advice and help of various kinds were willingly given by Michael Yudkin, Mark Griffith, Steve Simpson, Angela Douglas, George McGavin, Jack Pettigrew, George Barlow, Colin Blakemore, John Mollon, Henry Bennet-Clark, Robin Elisabeth Cornwell, Lindell Bromham, Mark Sutton, Bethia Thomas, Eliza Howlett, Tom Kemp, Malgosia Nowak-Kemp, Richard Fortey, Derek Siveter, Alex Freeman, Nicky Warren, A. V. Grimstone, Alan Cooper, and especially Christine DeBlase-Ballstadt. Others are acknowledged in the Notes at the end.

I am deeply grateful to Mark Ridley and Peter Holland, who were engaged by the publishers as critical readers and gave me exactly the right kind of advice. The routine authorial claim of responsibility for the remaining shortcomings is more than usually necessary in my case.

As always, I gratefully acknowledge the imaginative generosity of Charles Simonyi. And my wife, Lalla Ward, has once again been my help and strength.

R ICHARD D AWKINS

Professor Richard Dawkins is a world-renowned evolutionary biologist and author. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and holds the Charles Simonyi Chair of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. His first book, The Selfish Gene (1976), was an instant international bestseller, and has become an established classic work of modern evolutionary biology. The Blind Watchmaker (1986), too, has become world-famous. His other works for the general public have each been highly successful.

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