Our writer finds in the story of the police horse lent to Rebekah Brooks a Swiftian satire that highlights animal nobility and human awfulness

Ministers will today dash hopes of an immediate ban on the use of wild animals in circuses.

The Great Divide is one of several recent books on the deep ecological roots of human history, a trend begun by Jared Diamond with Guns, Germs and Steel (1997). Peter Watson takes some leads from Diamond but goes much further in his attempt to rescue the pre-Columbian world of the Americas from the contempt and even hatred expressed by many at the time of the 2009 Aztec exhibition at the British Museum. One article called the artefacts on display "As evil as Nazi lampshades made from human skin".

Every week we invite competing travel companies to give us their best deal for a specific holiday. Today: a 10-day trip to the Indonesian island of Bali in August. Prices are per person based on two sharing. All prices include flights departing from Heathrow and transfers.

A new species of lizard has become a legend in its own lunchtime after being identified by scientists from the menu of a local restaurant in the region of Vietnam where it lives.

Very occasionally a book comes along which enables you to see the world in a different way, and I have just discovered one. The title is Butterflies: Messages from Psyche and the author is Philip Howse, a retired Professor of Entomology at the University of Southampton. Published six weeks ago, the book is large-format, and since it is profusely illustrated with splendid photographs of butterflies and moths, many of them magnificent tropical species in bravura colours, your first thought is: coffee table. Yet something radical is going on in these pages which marks this volume out as one to be read rather than left lying around in your sitting room.

They have been around since the time of the dinosaurs and have in the past survived several global mass extinctions of species, but now lizards are at serious risk of disappearing from the face of the earth as a result of climate change, scientists said yesterday.

Jean Rhys's favourite perfume was named L'Heure Bleue, and this melancholic scent featured in her first novel, Quartet, worn by a brave young female, the heroine breathing in the scent, hoping that she can absorb some of her rival's self-possession. This atmospheric biography captures not only the scents, but also the textures and colours that filled the complex life of the novelist.

A new giant species of monitor lizard was discovered in the forests of the Northern Philippines, scientists said today.

Never in the field of equine conflict has so much hinged on so little. With the distribution of $10 million at stake three noses passed the post in almost perfect unison here last night – and it was barely by their nostrils that the camera favoured Gloria De Campeao over Lizard's Desire and Allybar.