Caroline Grigson's Menagerie promises a history of exotic animals in England from 1100 to the founding of London Zoo in 1837. As a zoologist and former curator of the Royal College of Surgeons, where many of the skeletons and other remains of the subjects of the book have ended up, Grigson is in a privileged position to tell this story. She deftly combines printed source material, artistic representations and actual specimens, including a damaged tortoise shell currently housed at Lambeth Palace, a relic of the gift given to William Laud in 1628 when he was Bishop of London. The result is a comprehensive and complex tale of centuries’ worth of the relationship between man and beast in England.

The book is divided by chronological period, beginning with the Normans and ending with William IV's reign. Later chapters focus more explicitly on individual monarchs, emphasizing and making explicit the important role of royal patronage in the creation of menageries. However, this fascinating subject could have been divided in a number of ways, with each period apparently having its ‘star’ animal. In the Tudor period, mammals were only of interest if they were edible, could be kept as pets or baited in sport. In the seventeenth century, birds continued to be popular among nobles, with apes becoming in vogue by the Hanoverian reign. By 1735, bears were not considered exotic enough, with the Duke of Richmond complaining ‘I am overstock'd with them already’ (p. 68). Lions, as Grigson points out again and again, as ‘king of the beasts’, were a constant presence at the Tower menagerie (the royal Menagerie at the Tower of London, founded around 1204), although the origins of the ‘king of the beasts’ motif is left unexamined. Exotic animals as gifts continue into the reign of George III, his wife Queen Charlotte receiving a female zebra. Beyond being gifts for royalty, in Grigson's own words the reasons for keeping exotic animals were ‘many, varied and overlapping’ (p. 262).

In addition to their being exotic, exciting, strange novelties and curios for aristocrats, there was huge economic motivation for the trade in animals. Many attempts were made at acclimatizing non-native species to British weather (although, as Grigson points out, every attempt to do so was disastrous), and animals represented the livelihoods of menagerie owners, as well as a quick profit for East India Company sailors returning home. Artistic motivations and interest in the burgeoning field of natural history were also powerful motivations for collecting animals. For historians of science, many of the names that appear again and again will be familiar: Joseph Banks, John and William Hunter, Hans Sloane, Daniel Solander and George Stubbs. However, Grigson also reveals a huge cast of supporting characters, from the animal merchants and the aristocrats (dukes and duchesses) who patronized the burgeoning field of natural history, to the East India Company sailors hoping to make a quick profit by bringing animals back from their travels, and the touring show operators. Grigson reveals the fluidity between the Tower menagerie and commercial touring shows and the small network of menagerie owners and animal keepers. The aristocrats who had menageries were well acquainted with the animal merchants, with animals changing hands in both directions. However, it is clear throughout that, just like in the Tower menagerie, it is the animals that are the stars of the show.

One group of people missing from the record is the visitors to the various menageries such as the Exeter Change, a menagerie based in London's Strand from the 1770s, which has its origins in tours of exotic animals across the country. While some high-profile visitors, including royalty, recorded their thoughts on these shows for posterity, the broader public view of such shows and the existence of such animals in Britain is largely unrecorded. Some sense of public opinion may be gleaned from newspaper reports. A particularly good anecdote is of the Morning Chronicle in 1816 voicing the opinion that the Exeter Change was a nuisance, leading Edward Cross, its owner, to retort, ‘the newspaper called the Morning Chronicle is a greater nuisance … to England than all the Wild Beasts in the country’ (p. 196).

In her conclusions, Grigson warns against reading the exhibition of exotic animals at this time as symbols of empire, as she is doubtful that the public would have viewed the animals in this way. Without sufficient evidence one way or another it is difficult to say for sure. However, it is evident throughout that the trade, and subsequent exhibition, of exotic animals in England were made possible by British imperial and maritime endeavour. Some examples of the intersection of maritime endeavour and animals in British culture are more palatable than others: the lion named ‘Victory’ after Nelson's triumph at the Battle of the Nile, for instance, is an amusing reflection of the importance of maritime activity to British culture. While possibly beyond the scope of Grigson's work, the parallels between the transportation of animals and the transportation of humans against their will during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries deserves analysis. Certainly within the book, the treatment of the transatlantic slave trade merited a more sensitive treatment: I personally cringed every time the word ‘slaves’ appeared in lieu of ‘enslaved people’.

Grigson's writing is evocative, and full of fascinating and often funny stories, including an account of a London merchant who asked for ‘2 or 3’ apes, but forgetting the ‘r’ in ‘or’ ended up with far more than he bargained for. Although this occasionally leads to a trade-off between anecdote and analysis, Grigson's abundance of evidence creates a useful resource for historians of both science and art, and everything in between.