One man and his platypus

As a child, the zoo felt like a magical world – lionesses lounging under dull British skies, laminated tanks of rare reptiles and flurries of exotic birds I had only ever seen in books. I was raised o

When Tipu Sultan resisted Britain’s colonial expansion, he was painted as a bogeyman and, after he fell, his kingdom was looted with shocking rapacity, but his legacy has long awed the British–not least William Blake and John Keats, as Lucien de Guise discovers

D o you remember cecil the lion, the bold, wild and archetypally handsome big cat at Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park? With a glorious flowing mane and a royal swagger, Cecil was the star attraction at

The dandy’s role as icon and irritant

“Hands of Saint Dominic” by Albrecht Dürer, 1506; ...

It’s 9pm in late april in an area of the Isle of Man known as the Ballaugh Curragh, and a most unusual nocturnal migration is taking place. As darkness descends on a 2km² area of wet woodland, an esti