A Short History Of The World According To Sheep

Sally Coulthard Apollo £16.99 ★★★☆☆

In 2004, residents of the Yorkshire village of Marsden faced a mystery. Despite the cattle grids installed to keep sheep that grazed the surrounding moors out of the village, the creatures had suddenly begun to break into gardens and chow down on the lawns and flower beds. The grids were far too wide to leap, and their bars too tricky for little hooves, so how on earth, the villagers asked themselves, were the sheep getting in?

It was only when a local caught one in the act that the incredible truth emerged; the cunning creatures had worked out that they could lie on their broad, woolly backs and roll across like commandos.

This tale of unexpected ovine intelligence (sheep’s brains are, it turns out, among the most highly developed in the animal kingdom) is one of dozens deftly assembled by Sally Coulthard in this very readable and rather charming book. By splicing such domestic anecdotes with politics and economics, she creates a history a good deal more interesting than it may sound to the sheep-indifferent reader.

Beginning with the emergence of the first wild sheep in Asia between ten million and 20million years ago, and ending with the famous clone Dolly (inset below), Coulthard focuses on the impact of sheep, wool and woollen textiles on British society during just the past 2,000 years.

Some of this will be familiar from school history lessons. However, much, such as the embedding of coded messages in knitting by wartime spies, is surprising, and the detail drives home the extent of the influence of sheep on our landscape and history. ‘I thank God and ever shall,’ read the inscription on the home of one medieval wool merchant in Newark, ‘it is the sheepe that payed for all.’ Coulthard illustrates the truth of that maxim and raises interesting questions about the roles that sheep may or may not play in the future as farmers grapple with climate change.

A snappy, stimulating book, and certainly not just for shepherds.