The Natural History of Unicorns, By Chris Lavers

Close your eyes and imagine, for a moment, a unicorn. What goes through your mind? Is it a small, gentle animal, cradled in a woman's lap? Then most likely you are steeped in Christian tradition. Or is it instead a noble, equine creature, facing a lion on a coat of arms? Then your upbringing is more likely secular. Or is it a magical beast? Then perhaps you have read your children to sleep, or read New Age mysticism. You see, the unicorn reads us as much as we read it. The unicorn goes to places in the mind that we may not have known existed.

Unicorn scholarship is as old as the creature itself. Although early 20th-century scholarship concluded that this enchanting animal never, in fact, existed, Chris Lavers resurrects the creature in all its glories, showing us how rich and strange are our inner worlds. Yet this is not only a book about unicorns. Other creatures prowl through the pages – the Indian rhinoceros, the walrus, the orangutan – shedding light, also, on what it might mean to be human.