Though this vale of tears we call the world is plentifully stocked with bleak places and spaces - Abu Ghraib, Chernobyl, Auschwitz-Birkenau etc - the most dismal environment I've encountered was a sitting-room full of unemployed lads and lassies in …

The naming of those fantastic (and hideous) creatures that routinely crawl from the earth's dark chasms or slither from the depths of its briny seas is a process both mysterious and (occasionally) spontaneous. Granted there are some, like this chap, …