Natural Histories

A speculative novel about an amphibious threat held dire warnings for interwar Europe.

The fact that lobsters ‘walked’ on their claws puzzled even Aristotle. He had to employ all his deductive genius to explain why.

It took a long while for Rudolph and the other reindeer to team up with Santa Claus. But once they did, there was no stopping them.

In 1822 a badly abused donkey became the first animal to receive justice in a British court.

Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, was obsessed with falconry. This led him to write a truly revolutionary book on the subject.

The first of Earth’s creatures to hurtle into the Moon’s orbit were slow and sedentary residents of the Great Steppe.

Captivated by swarming cicadas, the young son of a freed slave was inspired to become one of the greatest minds of the American Enlightenment.

Does the intelligent sea mammal, long associated with Venus, the goddess of love, offer a clue to a lost jewel of the Renaissance?

Defying categorisation since its discovery, was the platypus a mammal, a reptile, or something else?

Roman poet Catullus transformed an unremarkable bird – the sparrow – into a contested symbol of eroticism.