A-Paws for ‘Top Dogs’

It was definitely paws for thought at Hudson Grace, the charming vintage design shop in the Montecito Country Mart, when British author Georgina Montagu promoted her colorful 300-page coffee table tome Top Dogs: A British Love Affair, featuring boldface named owners and their beloved canines.

One of the more notable is Camilla, wife of King Charles III, who was interviewed at Sandringham House, the 12,000-acre Norfolk stately pile in the east of England, which was a gift from Queen Victoria to her son, later King Edward VII.

Camilla is pictured with her two Jack Russell terriers, Bluebell and Beth, rescued from London’s Battersea Dogs & Cats Home.

The book, which includes wonderful photos taken by Dylan Thomas, a former assistant to Lord Snowdon, ex-husband of the late Princess Margaret – Queen Elizabeth’s younger sister – was written over an 18-month period and features more than 30 figures from the U.K. world of society, fashion, art, design, and business alongside their dogs at their homes.

An old acquaintance Lord Charles Settrington, now the 11th Duke of Richmond and 11th Duke of Lennox, owner of the 12,000-acre Goodwood estate in West Sussex, home to the famous racecourse and the more recent Festival of Speed, is featured with his two pets Ruby and Leto, a spaniel and a dachshund.

Others include designer Jasper Conran, who has just opened a wonderful new hotel in Tangier, Morocco, where I attended the late publisher Malcolm Forbes’s celebrity-packed 70th birthday party in 1989 at his Palais Mendoub overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar. As well as composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Carole Bamford – chatelaine of Daylesford, a 2,000-acre Gloucestershire estate, formerly owned by Lord Rothermere, owner of London’s Daily Mail – and noted international art collector Baron Heini von Thyssen, who I knew well when he had a pied-à-terre at New York’s Pierre Hotel, a short distance from my Upper Eastside apartment.

Georgina, who has written for the London Sunday Times and Evening Standard, is now planning another coffee table book project focusing on top dog owners in New York or California.

Stay tuned…