"I think .... "

Darwin's first sketch of an evolutionary tree, notebook of 1837.

In 2020, it was announced that this notebook, which had 'gone missing' as long ago as 2001 from the Cambridge University collection of Darwin's writings, had in fact been stolen. Unlike thefts of valuable paintings, which almost always have a profit motive, the circumstances here suggesed an archetypal 'mad scientist' who hoarded the notebook in his or her dungeon. The notebook was returned (in a pink gift bag) to the Cambridge Library in March 2022, and is now on public display as part of a new exhibition on Charles Darwin.