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Joseph Banks

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About this listen

Botanist, explorer, President of the Royal Society and one of Australia’s founding fathers.

Sir Joseph Banks was among the most influential figures of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As a young man he accompanied Captain Cook on his voyage of discovery to Australia, in later years he was instrumental in establishing Kew Gardens as the greatest botanical centre in the world and he knew just about everybody who mattered in the scientific circles of the time.

Patrick O'Brian's masterly biography draws on much hitherto unpublished material. Far from being the colossus of science traditionally imagined, Joseph Banks emerges here as a warm-hearted enthusiast whose legacy survives not only in the record of his botanizing in the South Seas but in the development of the Australian continent and in the tenor and tradition of subsequent scientific inquiry.

©1987 Patrick O’Brian (P)2026 HarperCollins Publishers Adventurers, Explorers & Survival Australia, New Zealand & Oceania Expeditions & Discoveries Politicians Politics & Activism Professionals & Academics Science & Technology World Heartfelt Banking
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Interesting story, disappointing narration. One doesn't say "One of October". One says "First of October".
Secondly, one doesn't say "NE to SW".
One says "North East to South West".
Very disappointing that AI has crept into Audible ☹️

Narrated by AI

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