The Golden Mole: and Other Living Treasure: 'A rare and magical book.' Bill Bryson

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I think that challenge appealed to me: and the books I read as a child remain some of the most important to me, even now. This tiny jawbone, barely larger than a thumbnail clipping, did not match that of any other known mole, and so the Calcochloris tytonis– the Somali golden mole – was added to the species list . They have now been published as a book, The Golden Mole and Other Living Treasure, with illustrations by Talya Baldwin. A fine UK first edition, first printing hardback in a fine unclipped dustjacket (protected by a removable, clear thin mylar sleeve) - All my books are always securely packed with plenty of bubblewrap in professional boxes and promptly dispatched (within 2-3 days) - SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR - Pictures of the book are available upon request. T he word​ iridescent comes from the Greek for ‘rainbow’, iris, and the Latin suffix, escent, ‘having a tendency towards’.

The realisation that one might be show-offy in a good way is among Donne’s chief bequests to English literature, a salutary corrective to the 16th-century cult of Sidneian sprezzatura. Despite being a firm fiction fan, Chris Deerin stumbled upon a slim volume of essays in 2022 that he can’t stop thinking about. The same era thought bear cubs were born a solid lump of flesh and then licked into bear shape by their mothers.In presenting us with a world “populated with such strangenesses and imperilled astonishments”, The Golden Mole also wants us to be angry and committed to conservation. Philostratus warned his third-century readers that there were unscrupulous men out there who had found in the hare ‘a certain power to produce love and try to secure the objects of their affection by the compulsion of magic art’. But I think the thing that is most galvanic is the natural world itself, and the increasingly terrifyingly visible truth of its peril.

The male rufous hummingbird has an iridescent orange bib, like a Renaissance ruff rendered in Technicolor; when trying to attract a mate, it fluffs up its neck feathers and soars into the sky, then dives down so fast you can hear the air part around it. As Rundell says of a certain pangolin she once knew: “Her loveliness makes other forms of loveliness – diamonds, rubies, wrists bedecked with Rolexes – look like a con. There are 21 species, all from Sub-Saharan Africa; as is the way of these things, many of them are named after men. The only firm criterion for the animals was that a species or sub-species be endangered – which, dismayingly, is true for almost every species on Earth. We now know that unicorn horns were actually narwhal tusks, that hedgehogs are lactose intolerant, that drinking bats’ blood does not make you invisible.

But this is a 21st-century bestiary, and rather than trying to slot animals, birds and fish into a Christian worldview, Rundell – author of wondrous children’s books and recently a thrilling biography of John Donne – is arguing urgently for their survival. Katherine talks to Chris Power today about The Golden Mole and Other Living Treasures, a collection of impassioned essays on the world's endangered animals.