Maya peoples have long dominated southern Mesoamerica, an area stretching from the lowland coast of the Yucatán Peninsula to the highland mountains of southern Guatemala. While never a unified people, they gave rise to a great civilization with a dynamic set of beliefs and stories that varied between groups and retellings. To the Maya these have always been more than fireside tales: their myths formed the foundation of their culture, weaving together their ancestral and primordial pasts into...

From the bestselling author of The Robin: A BiographyThe wren is a paradox of a bird. The wren was on postage stamps and the farthing, it featured in nursery rhymes and greetings cards, poems and rural `wren hunts', still a recent memory in Ireland particularly.