A dictionary? No, this is really an astonishing ark filled with beasts from a fabulous zoo far more varied and entertaining than anything from ordinary natural history. From Abaia and Abath/ to Ziz and Zu, from the microscopic Gigelorum that nests in a mite's ear to the giant serpent Jormungandor who encircles the whole globe, there are beasts from every corner of man's imagination: the light-hearted Fearsome Critters of lumberjack tales find a place alongside the Sirrush of Babylon and the Winged Bulls of Assyria. Some of the fabulous beasts turn out to be real creatures in disguise - a...

Glasgow has a wide array of architectural treasures: the greatest medieval cathedral in Scotland; fragments of a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century 'merchant city'; the well-preserved heart of a planned new town, Blythswood; a city centre dense with Victorian and Edwardian commercial buildings; stately nineteenth-century terraces lining the Great Western Road and picturesquely crowning Woodlands Hill; opulent villas in suburbs like Pollokshields and Kelvinside; and streets of tenements from the workaday to the grand. The twentieth century has encircled the city with a broad belt of public...