By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Charles Kingsley was an eccentric who once made friends with a wasp which he saved from drowning. He gave a Devon village its name. He gave us a number of words and phrases still in common use. His most famous work, The Water-Babies, is an odd book which is at once a children’s classic, a moral fable, a response to the theory of evolution, and a satire on Victorian attitudes to child labour and religion.