in the world' and he immediately made plans, through long force of habit, to have them removed to England where British artists and scholars could study them at length without having to leave London.



The Peruvian government issued Elgin with a licence to 'remove some fur and a toenail or two' from the much prized creatures, and within a few weeks he had shipped them all to England where he attempted to sell them for £500,000 to the British Government in order to 'cover his costs'.



The Government, no longer eager to deal with Elgin after his previous and far more widely publicised looting in Greece, turned him down and the Earl was forced to recoup whatever he could, eventually accepting £25 and a return ticket to London from the Swindon City Council in 1843.



The llamas settled in well to their new environment and have happily continued to live and breed in the area of the city now named 'Elgin' in their honour.



Currently the only examples of llama urbania living anywhere in the world, Swindon's llamas are now the subject of a heated debate: The Peruvian government is mounting a fresh attempt to have the llamas returned on the grounds that they were stolen in the first place. Swindon City Council is maintaining that they bought the llamas in good faith and -slightly more controversially- suggest that they would have been extinct long ago had it not been for Lord Elgin's noble zoological gesture.