Dogs

The comment that baffled Boris

9 January 2021 9:00 am

Real men are not supposed to confess to feeling fear. But I am frightened, second time round, about the plague.…

A dog is not just for lockdown

9 January 2021 9:00 am

The Dogs Trust charity received 114 calls on 27 and 28 December from people wanting to offload their puppies. No,…

Petronella Wyatt: I’m not surprised Michael Gove is a lockdown fanatic

19 December 2020 9:00 am

What this government needs is a good dose of the London mob, which at its height in the 18th century…

China has a friend in Jesus

28 November 2020 9:00 am

Last week, I wrote about ‘Frost & Lewis’ (David and Oliver), leaders of our country’s team at the Brexit negotiations,…

All these lockdown puppies come at a price

10 October 2020 9:00 am

The hidden costs of the lockdown puppy boom

Unfortunately our new puppy is not just for lockdown

30 May 2020 9:00 am

Will the huge surge in demand for puppies and kittens during lockdown lead to a lot of abandoned pets when…

Riveting – and disgusting: BFI's 'Dogs v Cats' and 'Eating In' collections reviewed

9 May 2020 9:00 am

This week I’d like to point you in the direction of the British Film Institute and its free online archive…

Our puppy has no respect for the two-metre rule

18 April 2020 9:00 am

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

21 March 2020 9:00 am

When the news leaked at the weekend that the government was considering telling those aged 70 and over to self-quarantine…

I’m at risk of becoming a cat person

18 January 2020 9:00 am

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?

17 August 2019 9:00 am

The picture on the front of the Animal Blessing Service programme featured a dog, a cat, a rabbit, a goldfish,…

Boris Johnson and Petronella Wyatt at The Spectator’s summer party in 2016 (Alan Davidson/Shutterstock)

Petronella Wyatt: I’ve been turned into a curiosity – and Boris is to blame

13 July 2019 9:00 am

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?

6 July 2019 9:00 am

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’

22 June 2019 9:00 am

Doggy sounds childish. ‘How much is that doggie in the window?’ asks the popular song. (The song title used the…

The only ones to come out of Dogman well are the dogs

Bleak, unflinching, oppressive, violent – and magical: Dogman reviewed

20 October 2018 9:00 am

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

14 July 2018 9:00 am

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

31 March 2018 9:00 am

The latest film from Wes Anderson is a doggy animation set in a fantasy Japan and as there was a…

Sally Muir marvellously captures the particular hang of a hound’s head

True, dogged likenesses

16 December 2017 9:00 am

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

9 September 2017 9:00 am

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

26 August 2017 9:00 am

There have been times since the break-up when I’ve felt so low I’ve opened a bottle of Shiraz and spent…

The Spectator, 1916: To win the war, lose the dogs

28 May 2016 9:00 am

From ‘Food dictatorship’, The Spectator, 27 May 1916: Nobody would like to see the whole race of dogs exterminated, but…

Hound of love: Lolabelle gets old and Lolabelle goes blind and keyboards are laid out on the floor so that she can bash them with her paws, and enjoy the sounds

Weird, wise, thought-provoking and hypnotic: Heart of a Dog reviewed

21 May 2016 9:00 am

Heart of a Dog is a film by Laurie Anderson and it’s a meditative, free-associating rumination on life, loss, love…

Meet Leo... my soppy, dopey, affectionate, deadly predator

21 May 2016 9:00 am

Leo, the Hungarian Vizsla my wife brought home unexpectedly last year, is approaching his first birthday and not getting any…

Gentlest and sweetest of dogs

Beautiful, wilful, never dull: in praise of Clumber spaniels

7 May 2016 9:00 am

For the first time in more than 30 years we have no Clumber spaniel. We have had five: Henry, Judith,…