This fascination with the whale, like ’s report from Southampton Water, was an expression of Victorian fashion, a characteristic marriage of ingenious science and human curiosity. In England, live whales were delivered to aquaria in and (although one show was closed, for fear the flagrant activities of its performers should offend genteel dispositions), and in September 1877 a arrived in , in the centre of the world's greatest city.
British writer, filmmaker and curator
(born in 1958) is a British essayist, author of non-fiction books, film-maker, and curator. His 2008 book Leviathan, or the Whale won the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize, now named the .
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Behind me, bare s and es lie as cracks against the sky, evoking a peculiarly English landscape. In the late eighteenth century, drew the abbey's ruins in his sketchbook, tracing out the trees that had grown up around the crumbling gothic arches. In 1816 stayed at on his honeymoon, and painted its scudding clouds and billowing scenery. Theirs were records of a Romantic setting, an alternative reality of sensation and emotion. Hanging over the shore, the gnarled, enamelled branches are made darker by the reflected light of the sea and the stretch of bright shingle,