Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

From the shadowy figures of ancient cave paintings to modern pop culture icons like Godzilla.

Monsters have been a powerful part of human storytelling for thousands of years.

But why do we create them?

And what do these mythical beings reveal about our fears, beliefs, and the way we see

the natural world?

Speaking here to Rachel Dining, Natalie Lawrence, the author of the book, Enchanted Creatures,

explores these questions and more, revealing how monsters have evolved alongside us,

reflecting the hopes and anxieties of different cultures through time.

Hi, Natalie.

Today we're talking about your new book, Enchanted Creatures,

which traces 15,000 years of history through the stories of different monsters and creatures.

Why did you want to write this book?

Perhaps you can tell our listeners a bit about the inspiration.

So it really started with my PhD work, which was on strange beasts that came to Europe for the first time in the early modern period, so sort of 16th, 17th, 18th century. And the ideas that I

developed through that project, I saw actually spanned a much broader human story

in that we turn unknown things into monsters and also we imbue aspects of the natural world

with monstrousness because we are putting parts of ourselves out into other creatures, into the

landscape, even into plants sometimes. And so I thought it was a very important story to tell

because it tells us a lot about how we relate to the world and also how we see our place in nature.

And we'll get a bit more into that later on in the podcast, as well as some of the particular

stories of Munsters that you cover in the book. So your book covers a really broad time frame,

...