We all know medieval marginalia is full of some pretty sick snail fights. No one knows why, exactly, but there are hundreds of old drawings of snails in combat with knights in old manuscripts. The ...

Snails wielding swords and fighting off knights. Elephants that look like oversized golden retrievers. Dogs with uncanny proportions and hauntingly human eyes. Cats wearing clothes and playing musical ...

It’s common to find, in the blank spaces of 13th- and 14th-century English texts, sketches and notes from medieval readers. And scattered through this marginalia is an oddly recurring scene: a brave ...

Knights fighting snails, murderous rabbits, mischievous monkeys. The images in medieval margins range from the playful to the bizarre. With Dr Alixe Bovey. Show more Walking fish, knights fighting ...

The reason so many knights did battle with snails in the margins of medieval manuscripts remains a mystery (Credit: The British Library) The pages of medieval books are stalked by a ferocious monster: ...