I am now early-retired – an ex-blue chip corporate communications marketer. After I escaped from corporate slavery I moved from the UK to live in the French countryside, to live a more relaxed and peaceful life.

I first started to write all this down because my adult kids are not remotely interested in my Victorian taxidermy collection. I was afraid they’d sell it on eBay when I died. I promised to haunt them if they did.

I wanted to provide them with idiot-proof access to the knowledge they would need in order to sell it, but I knew I had to leave it in a place they would find it, so I made a website and it has now grown into a kind of online magazine.

This is probably the right place to state very clearly and in the strongest terms that although I collect Victorian Taxidermy cases, I am opposed to killing animals specifically for taxidermy purposes, and more specifically for “adventure” or “sport”. This is abhorrent and immoral and is simply unnecessary in today’s world. It implies the highest levels of selfishness and a crudeness of development in any person who defends it. If people find my perspective alienating, there’s no compulsion for them to read further into the blog.

The Victorian taxidermy industry was of its time which has now long gone. The Victorians took advantage of the abundance of creatures in the 19th century. Climate change hadn’t yet impacted our attitudes or destroyed animal habitats, neither had the global economic market started – nor the collective moral conscience.

Let’s not pretend that killing animals was ok. Back then, they didn’t know or understand.

But we DO understand.

We must appreciate what we have managed to conserve from The Victorians so far, and ensure that future destruction is avoided.