"'The pig is a friend' wrote the great Welsh poet R. S. Thomas, and Linden Peach's richly knowledgeable and engagingly written book offers the ideal introduction to the many, deep and deeply ambivalent relationships with animals that populate Welsh literature. Drawing on key themes in animal studies, and connecting deft analysis of specific portrayals of animals to cultural and ecological knowledges about them, the book reveals for the first time that the most innovative contemporary ideas about humans' relations with animals are profoundly expressed in Welsh literary traditions. This is a most exciting and important addition to literary animal studies.".