“We venture no comment on the evidence,” the editors write. “Our readers will appreciate it for themselves. Whatever be their interpretation of the facts, they will, at least, allow that in them there is something of the marvellous.”

"As your correspondent can attest having spent his student days chasing radio-tagged urban foxes around Bristol with an antenna, these canines are normally frustratingly shy and elusive - keeping their distance from humans and preferring to bed down for the night in a deserted graveyard rather than predating children in their beds."