Dogs
Single girl’s notebook
What this government needs is a good dose of the London mob, which at its height in the 18th century…
The Spectator’s Notes
Last week, I wrote about ‘Frost & Lewis’ (David and Oliver), leaders of our country’s team at the Brexit negotiations,…
Dog pounds
The hidden costs of the lockdown puppy boom
The puppy has won
Will the huge surge in demand for puppies and kittens during lockdown lead to a lot of abandoned pets when…
Doggie style
This week I’d like to point you in the direction of the British Film Institute and its free online archive…
Stinky Malinky is growing on me
Since the beginning of the lockdown, Caroline has been congratulating herself for having bought a puppy ‘just in time’. She…
Quarantine with our new puppy will send me barking
When the news leaked at the weekend that the government was considering telling those aged 70 and over to self-quarantine…
Pet peeve
Let animals be animals
I’m at risk of becoming a cat person
Just before Christmas our cat Runty died and I wasn’t in any rush to find a replacement. I like cats…
Can a church blessing tame my unruly dog?
The picture on the front of the Animal Blessing Service programme featured a dog, a cat, a rabbit, a goldfish,…
Petronella Wyatt: I’ve been turned into a curiosity – and Boris is to blame
I am beginning to feel like a sort of fairground curiosity: one of those pickled things in jars that Victorians…
How many dogs are there in Britain?
Model hobbies Asked what he did to relax, Boris Johnson claimed that he liked to make model buses. Some others…
The barking world of ‘doggo lingo’
Doggy sounds childish. ‘How much is that doggie in the window?’ asks the popular song. (The song title used the…
Bleak, unflinching, oppressive, violent – and magical: Dogman reviewed
Matteo Garrone’s Dogman, which is Italy’s entry for the foreign language Oscar next year, is bleak, unflinching, oppressive, masculine (very),…
Get rid of the Dangerous Dogs Act and more people will die
When I was a child in the 1950s it was unheard of for someone to be killed by a dog.…
It was good but I preferred slurping my genitals: Deborah’s dog reviews Isle of Dogs
The latest film from Wes Anderson is a doggy animation set in a fantasy Japan and as there was a…
True, dogged likenesses
There are currently 151,000,000 photos on Instagram tagged #Dog which is 14,000,000 more than those tagged #Cat. The enormous number…
Diary
September is my time of year. Summer is all very well if you’re one of those golden-haired, long-limbed types who…
Puppy love
There have been times since the break-up when I’ve felt so low I’ve opened a bottle of Shiraz and spent…
The dogs of peace
From ‘Food dictatorship’, The Spectator, 27 May 1916: Nobody would like to see the whole race of dogs exterminated, but…
Memories, dreams, reflections
Heart of a Dog is a film by Laurie Anderson and it’s a meditative, free-associating rumination on life, loss, love…
My soppy, dopey, deadly predator
Leo, the Hungarian Vizsla my wife brought home unexpectedly last year, is approaching his first birthday and not getting any…
Clumber spaniels
For the first time in more than 30 years we have no Clumber spaniel. We have had five: Henry, Judith,…
Chips with everything
Compulsory microchipping of dogs will hurt caring pet owners – but help busybodies
Your problems solved
Q. My husband-to-be and I both work full time. We are getting married from his family HQ and his kind…
