Do we really want to bring back the wolf?

Near our house on the Derbyshire-Staffordshire border is a place called Wolf Edge. It is a raven-haunted slope set to the sounds of curlew song in high spring and I visit it regularly, not least because I imagine that within the deep peat soil there is some remembrance of the site’s eponymous predator, and the thought thrills me.

A similar emotion appears to have gripped Derek Gow, and has led him to locate, over several decades, as many references to British and Irish wolves as possible. He has done a great job of researching the lore surrounding these much mythologised creatures and has unearthed plenty of arcane material – such as the role of wolves in children’s play (a schoolyard game called ‘Woof and lambs’); the millennia-long trade in their skins (738 passed through Bristol port in 1558 alone); and their bizarre links to medicine. The heart was apparently sovereign against epilepsy and dried wolf penis served as a cure for impotence.