Essay Two: Old English Sheepdogs

A new series of essays by the very popular Fiona Stafford, Professor of Literature at Somerville College, Oxford, following her much praised series of essays The Meaning of Trees and The Meaning of Flowers, Fiona explores famous composers and their devotion to certain dog breeds.

Through surprising and insightful stories and discoveries about both the composers and their dogs, the essays provide new insights into the type of people the composers were, their lives and the features of their chosen dog breeds that brought such devotion.

Composer, eccentric and suffragette Dame Ethel Smyth, the first woman to have an Opera put on at the Met, had five Old English Sheepdogs in succession, all called 'Pan'. She was so obsessed with her dogs that she considered them almost like husbands and wrote a book about the depth of feeling and the need for composers to have canine companionship, called “Inordinate (?) Affection” with the question mark showing she knew others found her obsession odd. Her famous friends and lovers included Emmeline Pankhurst and Virginia Woolf, These sturdy dogs were used as herding dogs whose tails were docked for centuries to avoid taxes and only started being bred with long tails again from 2006. Other musical devotees include Paul McCartney, whose first of many Old English sheepdogs inspired the Beatles song “Martha My Dear”.

Producer – Turan Ali
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