Is there any topic today which can be discussed without provoking a massive argument? Disagreements now seem to run the risk of instant polarisation and rapid escalation. It’s worse if you have an outward-facing public role and say something controversial (or say nothing at all about something controversial). Inevitably, social media’s juggernaut of hate will hurtle towards you, fuelled by about as much individual thought and intellectual sophistication as a migrating wildebeest.

 At social gatherings, the rules used to be: Don’t mention religion or politics. That way differences didn’t get too personal. Or, if you were having a dinner party, no one left with a pastry fork in their knee. Now the only safe topic for polite discussion seems to be do you prefer Aldi or Lidl?

Even this opening observation could provoke howls of recrimination. Being ‘nostalgic’ about the past is now frowned upon as an implicit criticism of wokeism, mass immigration or the right to identify as a pickled onion. And so here we are, a society either silenced or shouting. Which is exactly what Chinese and Russian disinformation campaigns want: a democratic country too enfeebled to oppose their territorial expansion and human rights abuses.

Well, rats to you! No seriously, rats! Another topic creating division. In his new book, Joe Shute wants to change how we think about rats. Stowaway: The Disreputable Exploits of the Rat (Bloomsbury, 2024), recounts his journey to understand the world of the rat; a world he insists we’ve misunderstood,

But those tails? I hear you cry. The diseases? We’ve been brought up to fear and despise the whiskery little blighters.  Our language says it all in our insults, from ‘dirty rat’ to ‘love rat’.

Yet research has revealed that the saying that you’re never more than 6 feet away is exaggerated/ Colonies usually contain small, settled populations that live in the same area for generations.

Why do we hate them so much? Out of all vermin, why should rats get such a bad press especially when millions are used in scientific laboratories testing modern-day drugs?

Part of the reason lies in their cleverness; their innate ability to see an opportunity, to adapt and outwit us. Take bird food. I remember my first state-of-the-art bird feeder stuffed full of expensive seeds and nuts. I was constantly replenishing it. But there were no birds. Then I saw something dangling from the fat balls, the size of a small Jack Russell.

Also, they’re always around horrible things like environmental catastrophes or junk food outlets. They stalk our nightmares of the time of The Plague, to a world without bin collections, and a return to the 1970s.

Yet rats are highly sentient beings. They laugh when tickled. When one of them dies, they cover up the body. Rats can be trained to clear minefields. Their powerful sense of smell is being used to detect TB.

Joe Shute wants violent impulses built on irrational fear to be replaced with tolerance, respect and affection. I can sympathise. Years ago, when I lived in Cambridge, a friend rented a room from an eccentric College don who delighted in shocking people. She kept pythons in the sitting room and a racoon upstairs. One day, her delightful Victorian kitchen table was taken over by a large cage. She had rescued unwanted lab rats.  Mavis Davies and Gerald became tame and teachable; their personalities soon as strong as the smell of their urine…

What we certainly need are more humane ways to control excessive numbers. In New York, they’re experimenting with ingestible forms of contraception. In Paris, the smart money is backing genetic modification. Rat poison is no longer acceptable. Rats are becoming resistant; the poison often seeps into the wider ecosystem putting pets and wildlife at risk.

Learning a new way to live alongside rats is going to be hard but perhaps not as hard as living with each other.