A Tip: Don't Talk Inheritances Around People Who Have Never Got One, Never Had A Vacation, Rode In Airplanes

Richard Dawkins is from a slave owning family, and the revelation seems to have the public atheist coming apart at the seams:

   "I condemn slavery with the utmost vehemence, but the fact that my remote ancestors may have been involved in it is nothing to do with me.

"One of the most disagreeable verses of the Bible – amid strong competition – says the sins of the father shall be visited on the children until the third or fourth generation."

Audibly irritated, he added: "You need a genetics lecture. Do you realise that probably only about 1 in 512 of my genes come from Henry Dawkins?

"For goodness sake, William Wilberforce may have been a devout Christian, but slavery is sanctioned throughout the Bible."

Richard Dawkins' sister Sarah Kettlewell, 67, is thought still to live on the estate, which has a farm shop and pedigree cattle. 

According to Companies House records which list Professor Dawkins as a director, Over Norton Park Limited made a £12,000 profit last year.

He insisted: "The estate is now a very small farm, struggling to make its way, and worth peanuts. The family fortune was frittered away in the 19th Century. Such money as I have is scarcely inherited at all."

He is now facing calls to apologise and make reparations for his family's past.

Esther Stanford-Xosei, of Lewisham, south London, the co-vice chairman of the Pan-African Reparations Coalition in Europe, said: "There is no statute of limitations on crimes against humanity.

"The words of the apology need to be backed by action."

The revelations come after a difficult few days for the campaigner.

On Tuesday 14 February, some critics branded him "an embarrassment to atheism" after what many listeners considered a humiliation in a Radio 4 debate with Giles Fraser, formerly Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, in which the professor boasted he could recite the full title of Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species", then when challenged, dithered and said: "Oh God."