Animal Encounters: Human and Animal Interaction in Britain from the Norman Conquest to World War I (Hardback)

Until the advent of steam and later the internal combustion engine, the fortunes of man and beast were intimately and essentially bound together. Animals played a variety of fundamental roles in a range of human work and leisure activities such as transport, agriculture, industry, warfare, sport and recreation. Their importance to human progress has become increasingly hard to grasp for our largely urbanized society, from which the animal world has become ever more remote. Animal Encounters draws on the author's lifetime interest in the fields of art history, topographical literature, archaeology, history and archaeozoology, to provide an overview of the evolving relations between the human and animal populations of the British Isles from the Norman Conquest to World War I. In this very readable, instructive and well-illustrated narrative, Arthur MacGregor explores the animal kingdom from bees to horses, and the range of human activities, from pigeon-breeding to bear-baiting, showing how interdependent the animal-human relationship has been throughout history. Animal Encounters will have a broad appeal, aimed at all those with sympathy for and an interest in the animal world.