Ship's surgeon Lemuel Gulliver is stranded on the island of Lilliput after his boat founders.

In the first of many weird and wonderful adventures he meets a diminutive people prepared to wage war over the correct way to crack an egg.

The castaway also visits a land full of giants, with wasps the size of partridges; a floating island where the best brains are engaged in trying to extract sunshine from cucumbers; and a land of civilized, rational-minded horses who show up the repulsive, humanlike Yahoos in a very bad light.

Both a children's fantasy classic and a scabrous satire on politicians, philosophers, scientists - indeed, humanity itself.

Gulliver's Travels is as fresh, amusing and bitingly savage today as it was when published to wide acclaim almost three centuries ago.