I've yet to get my hands on this, the latest lavish compendium of natural history facts and folklore to follow in the footsteps of Flora and Birds Britannica, so I was particularly eager to hear its principle author speak last night.
Marren is a humorous and knowledgeable enough writer but I felt little of his facility with the written word displayed in this lecture. Despite this lack of charisma, however, Marren was able to give us a vivid commentary on a series of images that appear in Bugs Britannica. He took us through some of the extraordinary beliefs and superstitions surrounding spiders, flies, dragonflies, beetles and snails. Attributing cultural significance to such lowly and familiar creatures gives a fresh insight into how the natural world is inextricably bound up with human lives. The portrayal of insects and other invertebrates in art, political discourse, poetry and folklore is remarkable - Large White and Painted Lady butterflies are endowed with Biblical significance in Durer's painting of the Adoration of the Magi of 1504, while Honey Bee society has historically justified the political status quo with its clearly defined hierarchy and the Queen very much at the top.
I came away from Marren's lecture with the idea that modern studies of invertebrate ecology exclude some of the most interesting aspects of bugs - their ancient and intimate relationship with human experience. This colourful world of myth and folklore surely needs to be cherished as much as the invertebrates themselves.
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