MAN AND DOG

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 483, 24 September 1948, Page 15

MAN AND DOG

THE WAY OF A DOG.‘ By Sir William Beach Thomas. Michael Joseph Ltd.

HAVE long been familiar with Sir William Beach Thomas’s writings on the English countryside, mostly through his "Open Air" column in the English Observer. But Sir William on the (continued on next page)

BOOK REVIEWS (Cont'd)

(continued from previous page) Tawny Pipit or Sir William on the Water Vole are primarily for home consumption. Dogs are common to both hemispheres. The Way of a Dog is somewhat mongrel in conception. Part 1 (Letter to My Dog) is a reasoned and reasonable tribute to one particular dog. Part 2 (Animal Medley) deals with topics as loosely related as Animal Friendships end the ethics of field sports. (Field to Sir William, blood perhaps to you.) There is a delightful chapter on Human Puppyhood, suggesting that a lot can be learned about children’s mind-work-ings by studying the behaviour of puppies. This cheerful haphazardness prevents me from describing "The Way of a Dog" as a Book You Can’t Put Down, though I feel safe in saying that it is not & book you could put down and forget where you put it. The appeal of the book is of course primarily to dog-lovers, but by no means exclusively. For there is nothing aggressively or unctfitically "doggy" in Sir William’s attitude. He preserves throughout a sense gf proportion, conscious that dogs in the mass show many of the variations of humans in the mass, that there are dogs and. dogs. Even when dwelling on the amiability and intelligence of his departed Whuff he can pause to cock a snook at those sentimentalists responsible for dog cemeteries and parlour pekes. In format, The Way of a Dog has the New-Old Look, the large type, the generous margins, the adequate illustrations (by Allen Seaby) which encourage us to hope that in the future reading will be more of a relaxation and less of an dctivity. PRE,

M.

B.