Welcome to Part Two of the William Buckland saga, featuring Laurel Rockall of the High Tales of History podcast.

If you thought licking cathedral floors and revolutionizing palaeontology through fossilized poop was weird, wait until you hear about his lifelong mission to eat every animal on Earth. In this episode of History's Greatest Idiots, we dive deep into Buckland's practice of "zoophagy," his house that was basically a Victorian zoo gone wrong, and the most infamous dinner party in history where he ate the mummified heart of King Louis XIV of France.

This is the story of how brilliance and complete insanity can coexist in one man who served his guests mice on toast while a hyena in academic robes wandered through the living room.

The Zoophagist's Manifesto:

• William Buckland's lifelong goal: eat his way through the entire animal kingdom

• His philosophy: "The stomach rules the world! The great ones eat the less, and the less the lesser still!"

• The actual, documented menu from the Buckland household (these aren't rumours, these are from his children's memoirs)

• Regular dinner items: mice on toast, hedgehogs, crocodile steaks, panther chops, rhinoceros pie, roast ostrich, elephant trunk, porpoise head, horse's tongue, kangaroo ham, puppies, slugs, earwigs, and bluebottle flies

• The only two things Buckland declared disgusting: mole and bluebottle fly

The House of Chaos:

• Why the Buckland home was less "Victorian residence" and more "natural history museum gone catastrophically wrong"

• The indoor menagerie: guinea pigs, snakes, frogs, ferrets, hawks, owls, cats, dogs, a pony (INSIDE THE HOUSE), eagles, and monkeys

• Billy the Hyena: the real, living hyena who roamed the house in academic robes

• Tiglath Pileser the Bear: the black bear treated as an honorary Christ Church College member who attended wine parties, enjoyed horseback riding, and once raided a sweet shop

• The outdoor chaos: a giant tortoise William let people ride, plus foxes, chickens, and various creatures for "observation"

• Growing up Buckland: nine children raised in a house with a hyena, a bear, and a poop table

The Heart of a King:

• The 1848 dinner party at Nuneham House (residence of the Archbishop of York)

• The silver casket containing the mummified heart of King Louis XIV of France

• How a French king's heart ended up in England (spoiler: French Revolution and "Mummy Brown" pigment)

• Buckland's infamous declaration: "I have eaten many strange things, but have never eaten the heart of a king before"

• The moment he popped a 140-year-old royal organ into his mouth and swallowed it

• The horrified reactions from distinguished guests watching a priceless historical artifact get eaten

The Serious Scientist (Because He Actually Was One):

• First scientific description of a dinosaur: Megalosaurus (1824)

• Pioneering coprolites (fossilized faeces) in palaeontology and coining the term

• Revolutionary work on Kirkdale Cave winning him the Royal Society's Copley Medal

• Discovery of the Red Lady of Paviland (one of Britain's oldest known human remains)

• Contributing to modern geology by embracing glaciation theory over biblical flood narratives

• Training future scientific leaders including Charles Darwin's mentor

The Decline and Perfect Ending:

• Moving to Westminster Deanery in 1845 (with 16 staircases for maximum chaos)

• The perfect burial: discovering solid Jurassic limestone in his grave plot and needing explosives to excavate it

• His legacy today: lunar ridges, islands, and that coprolite table still on display at Lyme Regis Museum

  
  

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