On a winter's night in 1974, a crime took place that would obsess the nation.

It was an extraordinary news story.

The story of an aristocrat, Lord Lucan, who's said to have killed the family Nanny,

mistaking her for his wife, then somehow just disappeared.

One of the great mysteries in English criminal history. We're still looking for Lucan.

It's honestly one of the most powerful stories of my lifetime.

I'm Alex von Tundselman.

This is The Lucan Obsession.

Listen on BBC Sounds.

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

Hello, today we're finding light in the darkness, literally in the case of a novel from Iceland

and figuratively in the Golden Mole, which gathers a menagerie of endangered creatures and brings them wonderfully to life.

It's been a prolific year for the Golden Mold author, Catherine Rundell, who last month became the youngest ever winner of the Bailey

Gifford Prize for Super Infinite, her biography of the poet John Dunn. She also published The Zebra's

Great Escape, one of many children's books she's written. And now we have the Golden Moll

essays on an arcsworth of animal life. Catherine Rundell, welcome to open book.

Thank you so much for having me.

I wonder, can we get a flavour to start with and hear a little about the mole of the title?

Of course. The word iridescent comes from the Greek for rainbow iris, and the Latin suffix,

Essent, having a tendency towards. Iridescence turns up in many insects,

some birds, the odd squid, but only in one mammal, the golden mole. Some species are black,

some metallic silver or tawny yellow, but under different lights and from different angles,

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