Natural History

Interspecies Violence

Chronicling an abusive relationship between people and the animals we have hunted, imprisoned and eaten.

The Jellyfish Problem

Plant, animal or other? The struggle to categorise jellyfish mirrors the desire to impose a hierarchy on the natural world.

Isle of Dogs

No canine character has played a more crucial role in literature than Bendicò in Lampedusa’s The Leopard.

Park Life

Britain’s National Parks are a forgotten legacy of postwar reconstruction.

The World of Medieval Dogs

The people of medieval Europe were devoted to their dogs; one great French dog-lover declared that the greatest defect of the species was that they ‘lived not long enough’.