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# On 10 November 2015 the British House of Commons heard, in my view, one of the loveliest political speeches in history
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/10-noiabria-2015-goda-v-britanskoi-palate-obshchin-prozvuchala-na-moi-vzgliad-odna-iz-krasiveishikh-politicheskikh-rechei-v-istorii/
- Published: 2020-01-20T13:34:18.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:43:10.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: London, Society, People, Nature

On 10 November 2015 the British House of Commons heard, in my view, one of the loveliest political speeches in history. The clever and intellectual Rory Stewart rose in Parliament to speak in defence of hedgehogs. I invite you to watch this brilliant ten-minute address by a product of the Oxford Union, Eton and the Dragon School: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqTkLoekm\_0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqTkLoekm%5F0&ref=theparnassian.com)

The speech opens with the celebrated line of the Greek poet Archilochus, which Isaiah Berlin quotes in his famous essay: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

The occasion for the speech was a proposal to make the hedgehog a national symbol of England. A highly debatable idea, it must be said, given that the hedgehog was used by Saatchi & Saatchi in the Conservative Party’s advertising campaign for the 1992 election.

Besides stressing the hedgehog’s importance as part of the ecosystem, Stewart explains that the hedgehog population is also an ecological indicator, and proposes such simple measures for preserving the species on the island as cutting passages for hedgehogs through the hedgerows of landed estates.

The speaker notes that hedgehogs are being discussed in Parliament for the first time since 1566, which refers to the introduction, under Queen Elizabeth I, of a bounty of threepence for the head of every hedgehog killed. The chief pretext for the war on hedgehogs was the belief that at night they fastened onto the udders of cows asleep on the ground and drank them dry. Treacherous hatred of the hedgehog, sustained over two hundred years, very nearly brought about the complete disappearance of an animal that had scurried underfoot of the dinosaurs 56 million years ago.

Celebrated in folklore and literature as a mystical and magical creature, the hedgehog, who has left no people indifferent, has in nearly 2,000 years of study fallen victim to misconceptions and unfortunate myths. The first scientific mentions occur in the works of Aristotle, who wrongly believed that the hedgehog carried apples on its back; Isidore of Seville also wrote of hedgehogs, asserting that they travel with bunches of grapes on their humps. Buffon carried the error further, judging that the hedgehog hauls this fruit into its burrow to feed on in winter. But hedgehogs fall into a deep hibernation and do not lug home food for the winter.

Another legend, purely British, held that the hedgehog’s five teeth were a symbol of the five excuses of sinners before the Lord. But the hedgehog has not five teeth but thirty-six: 20 in the upper jaw and 16 in the lower. Five teeth, oddly enough, belong to the sea urchin, one tooth for each jaw.

Between 1566 and 1800 as many as 2 million hedgehogs were destroyed, and only in 1908 did the Ministry of Agriculture issue an official paper explaining that hedgehogs cannot drink milk from the teats of cows lying down. To this day hedgehogs in Britain are threatened with extinction, and many Britons have never seen one in the wild, only in zoos.