Richard Dawkins interview: 'It must be possible to construct life chemically, or in a computer'

Richard Dawkins has always been a figure of controversy. Part two of his autobiography, now out, picks up from the publication of The Selfish Gene. A combative presence on Twitter, he is a surprisingly much quieter personality behind the scenes, writes Carole Cadwalladr

Britain's most famous atheist is surprisingly low-key. The public Richard Dawkins - combative, outspoken, relentless - is, it turns out, a different beast from the private one.

Anyone who's witnessed a Dawkins intervention - on television, in print, or in 140 characters or fewer on Twitter - will have experienced him on fighting form: sure of his facts and opinions, unflinching in his deployment of both. In the flesh, in a room in New College, Oxford, his base for pretty much his entire working life (though he is now theoretically retired), he's quieter, less bombastic, more human. He's reflective, weighing up answers and expressing that most un-Dawkins-like sentiment: doubt. When I bring up his Twitter controversies, he cringes. It's not deliberate, he says. "I genuinely and honestly don't want to annoy people. I do want to clarify and it's true that clarifying sometimes backfires, but my aim is always to clarify."