This thrilling book combines fact with fantasy, science with romance. In an elegant exposition Peter Dickinson, award winning novelist, sets out to prove that dragons really did exist. The mythology of dragons gives many surprisingly consistent clues as to the size and nature of the beasts. Peter Dickinson has woven these intriguing folk-tales and anecdotes into a riveting thesis on how so great a creature as the dragon actually managed to fly. His theory exactly ties in with reports on dragons' flight patterns, eating habits and family life. He reveals to us the dragon's special reasons for hoarding, their distinctive mating and evolutoinary cycle, in a romantic yet well-researched and wholly satisfying construction of the dragon's unique way of life.Wayne Anderson supports the substantial text with his own brilliant illustrations of real dragons, their landscapes, lairs, the maidens they threatened and the knights they vanquished. His glowing pictures bring these strange and complelling creatures and their distant worlds to vivid life. They integrate with the text in a flourish of pictorial fantasy.