The Lady Magazine

18 September 2015

Dear Readers, Who would have guessed that when the first episode of Downton Abbey was shown in the autumn of 2010, that it would capture our hearts quite so completely. Death, disaster, illegitimate, children, collapsing soufflés; all life is there and now they’re back for the final time. Will Lady Mary get married? Will one of them end up in jail? Will they get a new Labrador? For those of us who are one of the 8.5 million dog owners in the UK, a whole series is a long time without a faithful hound in shot. But how faithful are they? According to a new book, by an obviously rather clever spaniel called Maxwell Woofington, dogs are very good at getting us to do their bidding. Was that a desperate whine for help you heard, or a master of manipulation at work? While you are thinking about it, you might want to cast your mind back over those outfits that have always held a special memory for you. According to Delia Ephron, she and her sister Nora’s lives were defined by the clothes they wore. But what woman’s isn’t? Who can forget their school uniform, for instance? If you could go back in time, would you have begged your parents to choose a school for its uniform? Or would you have settled for a prettier satchel? There’s a very pretty one on Lady Loves.