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Features

Top dog: how animals captured politics

How pets became the national priority

4 September 2021

9:00 AM

4 September 2021

9:00 AM

‘Bishops are a part of English culture,’ T.S. Eliot wrote in 1948, ‘and horses and dogs are a part of English religion.’ It was a joke. Is it still? Today the fervour for animal lives is so strong that at times it can certainly feel religious. Politicians like to tell us that we are a ‘nation of animal lovers’ because it is such an uncontroversial truth.

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