Seeing animals differently

Thomas Bonneville reviews a book that urges us to reconsider our relationship with animals

by Thomas Bonneville 9th March 2012

In their introduction to Living By Voices We Shall Never Hear - a collection of reflections, poems and essays - editors Pauline and Les Mitchell put the matter bluntly: for thousands of years, nonhuman animals ‘have been our unpaid, unacknowledged and, for the most part, appallingly treated slaves on whose backs, it is no exaggeration to say, our present world has been built. Perhaps it is time to consider our relationship with them.’