Animal oddities

Britain is a country mercifully bereft of threatening fauna–or so you might believe. John Lewis-Stempel provides a miscellany of our otherwise benign land’s more fearsome critters

The worst loss of life among animals during the Second World War occurred before a single bomb had dropped on Great Britain. Official notices of advice to the public on how to prepare for air raids we

He knew the layout of the nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, the source of the water that cools its reactors, and the high-voltage cables that move its electricity. He knew where a shell had rec

Unfairly maligned as a sneaky troublemaker, the quicksilver ferret is a characterful, curious and highly intelligent creature–with fascinating regal and cultural trappings to boot, writes Octavia Pollock

On being told that they had been bitten by a venomous snake, most eight-year-olds would panic. Not Nicholas Jubber; he was not terrified but disappointed by a diagnosis that contradicted his own. Nich

Tennyson’s embrace of science and catastrophe theory