Heroic Animals

How Pickles rescued the World Cup. How Wotjek the bear joined the fight against the Nazis. How Bobby the Wonder Dog crossed a continent to find his lost family. How Able Seacat Simon saved the crew of HMS Amethyst. How Gallipoli Murphy the donkey carried 250 wounded soldiers to safety. How Roselle guided her blind owner out of the Twin Towers on 9/11.

In Heroic Animals I want to tell the true stories of 100 remarkable creatures who have changed our world for the better.

There are all kinds of tales here: happy, sad, inspiring and funny. Life-saving canaries, empire-rescuing geese, dogs who can sniff out disease, ships' cats and even a ship's pig.

All these animals are heroes to me - whether they risked their lives to pull people out of the ruins of a bombed building, won a race against impossible odds, danced their way to an Olympic gold medal or have been so incredibly badly behaved that they have managed to inspire something good (Stoffel, the honey badger, I'm thinking of you).

Writing this book has brought home to me that there is no such thing as an ordinary animal. Every one has a heroic story to tell.