I am VERY bad at putting my Tatler stuff on here. Partly this is idleness, partly this is because it’s quite a complicated process involving huge PDF files and trying to shrink them and that little rainbow wheel you get whirring round and round on Macs. Normally I get bored half way through and go and make a bit of toast.

Anyway, I just had to dig out a piece I wrote for our February issue last year, re-read it and laughed at my own jokes. It’s about toffs and the extraordinary animal menageries that they used to keep. Largely in the Victorian era when it was fashionable to bring exotic animals back from jaunts abroad. The 2nd Baron Rothschild used to drive a carriage pulled by zebras, for instance. Barking, the lot of them. Will paste it below.