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What if the Minotaur didn't have to be a monster? This is a reimagining of the Minotaur's story that I first wrote over a decade ago for the Douglas Adams Prize, which has evolved over the years.

For early modern Europeans, the unicorn was not just a creature of legend but a matter of fact. Its horn, or “alicorn,” was believed to cure all ailments and protect against poison. In reality, these miraculous substances often came from narwhals from the Arctic seas, which caused quite the marketing challenge when the connection started to come to light...

This is the story of how an unassuming bird on a small island off the coast of Africa became entangled with the first truly global corporation and came to symbolise capitalist greed.

An irreverent reworking of Medusa’s myth. I first wrote this over a decade ago and unearthed it while researching her story again.

Thoughts on writing for a disappearing nature: how monsters became my refuge from environmental loss.

Why do unicorns and mythical creatures still captivate us? This essay explores what monsters - from medieval bestiaries to modern pop culture - reveal about the disenchantment of the modern world and the needs of our imaginations. If you go hunting through the bestiaries of the Middle Ages and the encyclopaedic natural histories of the Renaissance and early Enlightenment, you’ll discover a cornucopia of fantastical beasts. Some are familiar, others seem utterly absurd: man

Welcome to The Manticore. Thank you for stepping into my virtual cabinet of curiosities. This blog — named after the chimerical mythical...