Darwin fever is poised to sweep the popular imagination in 2009, as the world celebrates 200 years since his birth and 150 years since publication of On the Origin of Species. I thought I’d get Darwinia jubilatus out of my system early by using the first week of January to visit some local exhibitions devoted to the great man.

On Sunday, I headed over to the Natural History Museum for the Darwin – Big Idea exhibition (on till 19 April). This is the central plank of the Darwin200 celebrations in London. Model creatures, short films, correspondence and a couple of live animals help tell the tale of how Darwin pieced together his theories. It’s a detailed and enlightening ride. We learn how Darwin’s five-year voyage aboard the Beagle informed his thinking; the key species (iguanas, greater and lesser rheas, sloths and mocking birds) whose diversity and geography intrigued the young naturalist; and how Darwin wrapped himself in the works of other leading thinkers such as Malthus, Lyell and Erasmus Darwin. The story that emerges paints Darwin as a great synthesiser of ideas, melding geology, population theory and natural history with his own observations, to create his Big Idea, and then honing it for decades until the fear of being scooped by Alfred Russel Wallace provided the final fillip to publish. Along the way, we learn about Darwin The Man, his family and home life, peer inside a recreation of his study at Down House, and finish with a brief look at the ongoing resistance to his Big Idea from certain religious quarters.

Given the steep entrance price (£9, in an otherwise free museum) and the bitingly cold January morning, I expected the galleries to be quiet. Not so; the halls thronged with Darwin devotees. For the first, and hopefully final, time in my life I queued for a glance at a barnacle and elbowed my way to an unmarred view of a stuffed pigeon. The clamour was not helped by the poor lighting, which cast shadows over many of the information panels. Clearly, the museum had decided to weed out the weakest in some kind of curatorial experiment in artificial selection.

But with persistence and stamina (it took me 2.5 hours to get round), Darwin – the Big Idea is a hugely rewarding experience that eschews the trendy bells and whistles of multimedia to give a solid and traditional exposition.

Tomorrow…I head to a much smaller celebration at the British Library.