 Hello, my name is Julian Harrison and I am one of the manuscript creators here at the British Library in London and today I'm going to show you one of my favourite manuscripts, which is this bestiary, which we know as Harley Manuscript 4751. So this is one of my favourite medieval manuscripts in the British Library's collection. It's known as the bestiary and it was made somewhere in England around the beginning of the 13th century, that's around the year 1200 and while I love it so much, it's just full of all these incredibly diverse and rich illustrations of some really fantastic beasts. So for example, we have on this page here, I'm just looking, two goats. The text always describes the natural history of the animals, but in this particular case it shows these two goats which are on their hind legs and almost look like they're kissing each other and as you go through the manuscript, you see a combination of real animals, things that we know from the natural world but there are plenty of beasts represented in this manuscript which are things which are mythical, fantastical. So let me show you some of my favourites. So there are many weird and wonderful illustrations in this particular manuscript. On this page in front of me, for example, I'm looking here at a griffin. Now a griffin of course isn't actually a real creature at all and you can see it's got its wings, it's got its claws, it's got the body of a lion almost and the head. It's got its claws almost like an eagle, a bird, a prey, a raptor of some kind. This is one of my favourite illustrations from this particular bestiary and it shows a whale and it's an incredible scene because it shows you've got beached on the back of a whale. There's this boat here and the people have actually mistaken the whale for an island so they've decided to moor here. They've even lit their own fire about to prepare their dinner. Of course there's a whale, you can see the whale, it's got all these fish in its mouth and of course this is not a great place to actually moor your own boat. The whale is obviously going to take great annoyance at this encounter but again this is a great story. The Middle Ages and antiquities follow these really colourful stories about legends based around animal facts and geography and the natural world and this manuscript is the embodiment of all that. And of course everybody loves the donkey and this donkey here, well I mean it's got the cutest smile that you might ever have seen in any donkey you've ever encountered. It's shown with a watermelon of some kind and its owner is prodding it at the behind with a stick and the donkey is looking on its face and thinking I really want to do this and I love the rich colours of this particular manuscript you can see the blues and the purples of course. When you think about any medieval manuscript the first thing that you have to appreciate is that it's a handmade artifact every single component from the parchment which makes the pages through to the ink, the compounds, the different natural components the inset parts, the flowers which went towards making the different colours and the pigments and then of course it would be bound together so a medieval book although in essence in shape and structure it's much like a modern book it's actually a handmade artifact. So a vestry is a kind of animal encyclopedia, it's a reference work which people would have consulted to find out about different animals you really can imagine and if you came to see our exhibition Harry Potter, History of Magic you might have recognised this particular bird now this is a fantastic beast whoever you saw one, this is the phoenix and it's drawn here, it's actually drawn twice on this particular page so in its old age the phoenix was supposed to make its own funeral pie by plucking twigs from branches or trees and then it would make its own pie here as shown here and it was then set fire to itself and then nine days later the phoenix was said to resurrect itself and that's, you know, as we know the phoenix is a fantastical bird which does actually have the power to rejuvenate, to grow again and I suppose, I mean when it comes to choosing your favourite page in your favourite manuscript, well that's one of them that's a picture of seahorses and other fish and of course seahorse, it's actually this one here is literally depicted by the illustrator in his manuscript as a horse with a fin, the best seahorse you've ever seen we've recently had this whole manuscript digitised so you can come and view it in its entirety on the British Library website and if you're a cat fanatic like many of us are you can spend your days all in a way looking at this gorgeous picture of these cats here or there's a, for example, I can see a, oh it's a mole there's a little cute little mole here I mean we're very pleased that we've received a funding from the Polotsky Foundation which enabled us to digitise this manuscript and we've been able to put it online with some 400 other manuscripts from the library's collections which just means it's a great resource for anybody who wants to study the history and culture and literature of France and England up to the year 1200 I've loved being curated on camera today tune in for future episodes with other of my colleagues here at the library