The difficulties of allowing a polar bear to go fishing in the Thames without letting it escape, a tally of umbrellas snatched from visitors by a leopard and the story of a grizzly bear called Martin are all recounted in a new exhibition at the Tower of London.
The unnamed polar bear arrived at the Tower, in East London, in September 1252 after it was given to King Henry III by the king of Norway. Bear management was an inexact science in the 13th century, but the animal’s keeper worked out a way of exercising the creature by the end of October, when he submitted expenses for “a muzzle and an iron chain to hold the bear when out of the water and a