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The first celebrity elephant: Jumbo by John Sutherland
At London Zoo, Jumbo was assumed into the British imagination as a gentle giant.Big trouble: Jumbo with its keeper in around 1882Jumbo: the Unauthorised Biography of a Victorian Sensation John...
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Walks on the wild side: a weightless, weighty history of the Yorkshire moors
We now cannot think of the Yorkshire moors without Emily Brontë, but we must reclaim our moors from cream teas and see them from the vantage point of the raptors wheeling overhead.The moors near...
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Tasmania, the island with a shameful past and a hopeful future
Australia’s timewarp island was the setting for atrocities against Aborigines in the 19th century and has a harsh treatment of asylum seekers today. Yet many see Australia as a liberal hope for the...
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Gods in bottles and concrete crocodiles: British Folk Art at Tate Britain
This stuff is beyond classification; that is part of its appeal. It is Britain’s feral past.Holy water: these talismanic bottles are thought to have been made by Irish Catholics Strewn across New...
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Raptor enrapture: the story of a life saved by falconry
The sudden death of a woman’s father propels her into buying and training a goshawk – but then she starts to worry about her own identity. Let us prey: a 1955 image of a hawk catching a rabbit in the...
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After Mark Cocker’s glorious book, you will never look at a blackberry bush...
Great nature writing makes us look anew at what we take for granted.A Gibbs woodcut for the book. © Jonathan GibbsClaxton: Field Notes from a Small Planet Mark CockerJonathan Cape, 238pp, £14.99 What...
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The Queen's English: Victoria brought to life
A N Wilson's book reveals the surprisingly diverse tastes of this quintessential English monarch.Photo: China Photos/Getty ImageVictoria: a Life A N WilsonAtlantic Books, 656pp, £25 In the strange,...
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The naming of the shrew: language, landscape and the new nature writing
Nature writers are seeking to restore a rich, neglected vocabulary– but words can tame as well as illuminate the land.Wistman’s Wood, Devon, from “Uncommon Ground”. Photo: Dominick Tyler A couple of...
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How Oscar Wilde cracked America
The story of Wilde's coming to America is also the story of modern celebrity.Have smoking jacket, will travel: Wilde, photographed in New York in January 1882 by Napoleon Sarony. Photo: LIBRARY OF...
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If Haiti can't escape its past, it may still build itself a future
Five years after the earthquake that killed 300,000 people, new hope for the island nation.Spirits of the sea: a vodou ceremony near the town of Limonade on Haiti’s northern coast. Photo: Kena...
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