“Let’s go fly a kite and send it soaring / up through the atmosphere, / up where the air is clear! / Oh, let’s go fly a kite!” So – memorably – sang the freshly awakened and amended George Banks, superbly portrayed by David Tomlinson, in Disney’s “Mary Poppins.”
When I recently called up the Very Short Introductions section of the Oxford University Press website to check if any interesting natural history themed volumes were visible on the horizon, I found myself quoting that iconic, charismatic leader of the O.W.C.A., Major Francis Monogram, in exclaiming “Good googly moogly!”