Gillian Beer

Beer made her name in 1983 with Darwin’s Plots, which charted the impact of evolutionary theory on Victorian thought. Indeed, Ali Smith has described her less as a traditional lit crit scholar than as ‘an illuminator of the connection between the arts and the sciences’. Lewis Carroll, with whom she shares a birthday, is another scholarly concern. Beer, who was born into an East End family and brought up by a divorced mother, was made a dame in 1998 and is typically modest about her ascent: ‘I’m a historical remnant from the great days of free education.’