'For the first time, fish became our companions and a corner of many a Victorian parlour was given over to housing tiny fragments of their world enclosed in glass.'The experience of seeing a fish swimming in a glass tank is one we take for granted now but in Victorian England this was a remarkable sight. People had simply not been able to see fish as they could with the invention of the aquarium and everything that went with it.Goldfish in the Parlour looks at the ...

Obaysch: A Hippopotamus in Victorian London is the story of Obaysch the hippopotamus, the first 'star' animal to be exhibited in the London Zoo.In 1850, a baby hippopotamus arrived on English shores, allegedly the first in Europe since the Roman Empire, and almost certainly the first in Europe since prehistoric times. Captured near an island from which he took his name, Obaysch was donated by the viceroy of Egypt in exchange for greyhounds and deerhounds. His arrival was g...