The Times: My trip in the footsteps of my cousin, Charles Darwin

When the TV presenter, her sister Wendy and their 91-year-old father discovered who their ancestor was, their next holiday destination was a natural selection

Charles Darwin’s legacy was a family tree. He theorised that humankind shared a primordial ancestor with “all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth”. He recognised a kinship with every creature that drew breath and every plant that grew. Darwin was among the first to regard the great apes as our distant cousins. Far less distant from Darwin himself are the TV presenters Anthea and Wendy Turner, who last year discovered they were his eighth cousins four times removed. A relative of theirs, searching on ancestry.com, revealed the blood link between the author of On the Origin of Species and the sisters.

“It is a bit surreal, a bit bonkers to think that we are related,” Wendy, 56, says. “We said we should go to the Galapagos. But we didn’t really think it would ever happen.”

The news came as the Turner family’s living arrangements were undergoing evolution — in particular for Anthea and Wendy’s 91-year-old father, Brian (Darwin’s eighth cousin three times removed). In 2023 he moved to London to be near his daughters, after losing his wife and their mum, Jean. The couple had met as teenagers on the school bus and had been married for 67 years. Having lived all his life in Stoke-on-Trent, the widower downsized for a new life in the capital. Brian — a likeable gent with a firm handshake and a gentle Staffordshire accent — explained that he had made adjustments. His gardening duties are now lighter. He is still getting used to the Tube. He is dogmatic about his daily ten-minute walk to Marks & Spencer to exercise and keep the fridge stocked. But his daughters were insistent he marked this new chapter with a longer journey.

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