Wilberforce and Huxley: A Legendary Encounter, The Historical Journal 22

J. R. Lucas's The Historical Journal article on the Wilberforce-Huxley encounter is itself a work of historiographical correction, arguing that the famous 1860 Oxford debate, popularly remembered as a decisive rout of Bishop Wilberforce by Thomas Huxley over evolution, is substantially a later legend built up from partisan retellings rather than an accurate record of what was said. Lucas draws on contemporary letters and accounts closer to the event to argue Wilberforce's performance was more measured and Huxley's victory less clean-cut than the popular story holds. That argument was itself influential and is now part of an ongoing historiographical conversation, with later historians debating how far Lucas's own reconstruction should be trusted against the very partisan sources he is working from. Read it as a serious challenge to a popular legend, not as the final settled account of what happened that day.