Following the success of last year's Read 'From Saturn to Glasgow: Fifty Favourite Poems by Edwin Morgan', we once again invited the whole city to share in a mass reading experience. This year's read was open to everyone - adults, children, students, pupils and teachers - and Aye Write! hosted a series of themed events, readings and workshops.
To mark the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th birthday of the birth of Arthur Conan Doyle, Glasgow joined Edinburgh, Hampshire, Shropshire, the City of Westminster and most of South West England in The Lost World Read 2009, a mass-read of the classic adventure story The Lost World. The project contributed to Darwin 200 – the worldwide celebrations of the life and work of the man who transformed the world with his theory of evolution by natural selection.
Darwin and Conan Doyle were both educated at the University of Edinburgh, Conan Doyle's home city, where they studied medicine. Darwin’s work was influenced by Scottish scientists including his mentor the geologist Charles Lyell, born in Angus, and the Edinburgh-born zoologist Robert Grant.
The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Lost World Read 2009