Last night I was invited to Buckingham Palace to visit the pangolin. It was kept in a grand state room along with two rather sleepy full-grown tigers and a governess. The governess spoke to the pangolin – which was wearing a little red pill-box hat – in French. After observing these arrangements, I was escorted from the Palace down a tree-lined pathway by the royal zookeeper, a grey-haired man who expressed an interest in travelling to New York.