Charlie Mackesy’s bestselling and Oscar-winning stories about a boy, a mole, a fox and a horse deal in aperçus such as ‘Nothing beats kindness. It sits quietly behind all things’; ‘always remember, you’re enough, just as you are’. The ancient Greek Aesop – whoever and whenever he was (6th century bc?) – is the West’s inventor of animal fables, and his creations are rather more challenging.
The c. 350 fables credited to him mostly feature stereotyped animals – the mighty lion, tricky fox, ravenous wolf and so on. Some examples: a fox and donkey agreed to hunt together. But a lion appeared and the fox, hoping to save himself, said he would entrap the donkey for the lion to eat. The lion agreed, and the fox led the donkey into a hunting pit. Seeing the donkey secure, the lion ate the fox, saving the donkey for later.
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