RaveThe Sunday Times (UK)Brand, a professional ecologist, loves foxes. That’s foxes, the out-of-control urban menace that, when not having noisy sex, spread disease, murder cats and attack babies. Except, argues Brand, they do not. She has written a lovely little book in the animal’s defence. Quietly lyrical, often funny and gently persuasive, The Hidden World of the Fox is the ideal ironic stocking-filler for the sleep-deprived anti-vulpinist in your life ... Brand’s book breezily shatters vulpine myths. Sheep spread more disease. Foxes are small, weighing less than the average pet cat, with not terribly effectively teeth and jaws. Yes, foxes were eventually fingered in the case of the Croydon cat killer — but they were pulling the cats apart only after they had been hit by cars. Tiddles, rest assured, is safe.
