The Rest Is History - 323: History's Greatest Dogs

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

Rin Tin Tin, born on the Western Front in 1918, became one of the biggest movie stars of the silent film era. Greyfriars Bobby gained his fame for guarding his masters' grave for 14 years, until the day he died.  Bounce, Admiral Collingwood’s loyal companion, would hide below deck during the Napoleonic Wars, and Collingwood would sing to him after battle, to calm his nerves. Nixon's dog Checkers saved his political career, but never lived to see the White House. The wolfhound Gelert, who died protecting his master's infant son, and Blondi, Hitler's German Shepherd, were both put to death by their owners.  Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss history's most famous dogs. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Near this spot are deposited the remains of one who possessed beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of man without his vices. This praise, which would be unmeaning flattery if inscribed over human ashes, is but a just tribute to the memory of Bosun, a dog, who was born in Newfoundland, May 1803, and died at Newstead, November the 18th, 1808.

So Tom Holland, those are the words written by Lord Byron's friend, John Cam Hobhouse, on the urn of the dog, Bosun and Newstead Abbey, aren't they? Very moving tribute. Tremendously moving. And Byron wrote something himself, didn't he, about this dog? Yeah, so um inscribed on this tomb which is in the grounds of newstead abbey byron's ancestral home you have an entire poem by byron uh which concludes with the splendid couplet to mark a friend's remains these stones arise i never knew but one and here he lies so man's best friend dominic And that's the theme of today's episode.

We've chosen the seven greatest dogs in history. The magnificent seven. So Tom, I'm delighted you've chosen this because this is your topic. And what surprises me is that you're more of a cat person yourself. No, I love dogs as well. Do you? Yeah, I do. But because I live in London, it's easier to have cats.

Of course. Otherwise, you have to kind of go around with bags, scooping up poo and it's all a bit horrid. I'm going to betray my, my hand here. I'm very much team dog. Dominic, you astound me. Yeah. I think if I were an animal, I probably would be a dog. Slightly rabid one, perhaps.

Yeah. A stray. The kind of stray dog you might find on a Greek island. You'd be, you'd be a British bulldog, wouldn't you? Oh, that's kind. Actually, Bosun died of rabies. Did he? Which was very sad.

And Byron cared nothing for the danger of getting it himself and tended it, wiped away the froth from Bosun's jaws. Oh, cranky. Very, very touching. So I think this is an episode that has lots of touching moments, but also some quite sinister moments as well. Yeah. So quite a lot of variety. There is one very famous dog who does not feature in this and i think it's because we have agreed that um we will do an entire episode

on loka i hope i've pronounced that right is that your russian accent that's my russian accent the stray dog from moscow that was the first dog in space okay and i think that her story would be a wonderful way to um talk about the beginning of the space race and cosmonauts and all that kind of thing. So very good. She will come later. Well, our first dog is a contemporary of Laika's, I think. Yes.

Part of Laika's generation, in fact. I chose this specially for you. Yeah. So this is Chekaz, who's already featured on The Rest Is History. And Chekaz is the dog of Richard Nixon. Yeah. So very much a canine friend of the show, Checkers. So Checkers, Tom, do you know what kind of dog Checkers was?

She's Spaniel. That's right, Tom. That's right. And I can safely say people won't have noticed this listening to this podcast, but we actually had a massive hiatus then for about 10 minutes. We did more research than we've ever done before on the rest is history. Well, I frantically tried to work out whether Checkers was male or female because Nixon gives a famous speech about Chequers in which he consistently refers to Chequers as it. Which is very Nixon, isn't it?

Very Nixon. But Chequers was a black and white caucus manual. It was she. The New York Times ran an obituary of Chequers in 1964 and said of her, she had a ferocious bark but a gentle disposition.

Very like Richard Nixon, actually, Tom. Do all the first dogs, so the presidential dog is obviously the first dog. Yeah. Do the first dogs normally get a bit traced in the New York Times? No, they don't. But Chequers is a genuinely important political dog. So to set the scene, we're in 1952.

Senator Nixon, as he then was, had just been chosen by former General Dwight D. Eisenhower as his running mate on the Republican ticket. And Nixon was a slightly controversial choice because he was a bit of a Republican hatchet man, famous for his sort of attacks on communism and so on. And in September 1952, so just a couple of months before the presidential election,

the newspapers ran this story that they said it was a private slush fund. So the New York Post said, secret rich men's trust fund keeps Nixon in style far beyond his means. Now, as people remember, if they listen to our Watergate podcast, Nixon was a man of very modest means, modest background, and was very conscious of it. And when he was elected senator from California, a group of donors in Southern California, so there's sort of the network that basically backed him into the Senate, they got together and they created a fund to meet his political expenses. Now, this was actually not that uncommon in those days. So you had a small expense account as a US senator.

But if you're from California, there's a lot of flights back and forth. Washington, you're only covered for one, I think, a year. So this fund was going to meet his airmail and his travel costs and his telephone bills and sending out newsletters and stuff. And they raised about $18,000. So that's the equivalent to about 10 times that today. And because Nixon was a sort of very disputatious, pugnacious person, the revelation of this fund was a gift to his opponents. And they used it to sort of say he's very sleazy and he's corrupt. I think which was actually a bit

unfair because a lot of people have these kinds of funds. And Nixon genuinely was not very well off compared with a lot of politicians. So he kind of needed it to meet his expenses. He wasn't paying his kind of gas bill out of it. He wasn't buying motorhomes. He wasn't, no. He wasn't buying kind of caravan type arrangements and parking in other people's drives or anything. So there were mounting attacks on Nixon.

And Eisenhower, who always really despised Nixon, actually, he's very tempted to drop Nixon from the ticket. So the Eisenhower campaign basically bought time for a TV address and said to Nixon, this is your last chance. You have to explain this on TV. If the public back you, we'll keep you. If they don't back you, basically, you're out. So Nixon's under immense pressure.

He goes on TV, gives this speech, and he says, Pat and I are very poor. There's a line he says, which I always like, where he says, Pat doesn't have a mink coat. She has a respectable Republican cloth coat. But I always tell her that she'd look good in anything. Oh, brilliant. At that point, you know, some people are weeping with, you know, lots of people are weeping. Others projectile vomit. Right, exactly.

And then he has this fantastic twist where he says, now there's one other thing I have to tell you, because if I don't, they will be saying this about me too. We did get one gift. A man down in Texas had Pat on the radio mentioned the fact that our two youngsters, he's got two girls, Julie and Tricia, would like to have a dog. And believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip, we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore. They had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was? It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he sent all the way from Texas.

Black and white spotted. And our little girl, Tricia, the six-year-old, she named it Checkers. And you know what, says Nixon, the kids love the dog. And I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're going to keep it. Oh, God bless America. Yay for Nixon. Yay for checkers. It's a true story. So it was a Texan salesman called Lou Carroll had genuinely read an article about Pat Nixon, which she said her girls would like a dog. And he had genuinely sent them a telegram and said,

on behalf of the great state of Texas, I'd like you to have this puppy. So the speech is watched by 60 million Americans, which I think is the largest audience at that point in history for a political speech. Nixon says in his memoirs, the TV cameraman was crying at the end of the speech. The switchboard is jammed with supporters. So Nixon stays on the ticket ticket his political career is saved checkers were sent enough dog food to last her a year and they got sent leads they got sent dog toys they get sent collars the veteran columnist walter litman said it was the most demeaning

experience my country has ever had to bear in its history god well it's lucky that he died when he did hasn't seen what seen what's come later. Right. The amazing thing is that actually behind the Cheka speech, there's another dog speech, Tom. So this is actually two dogs in one. Oh, brilliant. Because what Nixon had done is the day before he gave that speech, he had remembered a speech

that Franklin D. Roosevelt had given in 1944 when Roosevelt was running for his unprecedented fourth term in office. And Roosevelt had been coming under unprecedented fourth term in office. And Roosevelt had been coming under great criticism from the Republicans. And Orson Welles, of all people, had suggested to Roosevelt that he mention his own dog, who was called Fala. And Roosevelt said in this speech, you know, the Republicans are, they're not just content with attacking me and my wife and my sons and my family. They also now include

my little dog, Fala, which was true because the Republicans had been telling this story that Roosevelt had left his dog behind on one of the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer in the middle of the war to go back and pick Fala up, which was completely untrue. But it would have been fair enough even if it had been true. Well, send a destroyer? The American people would rally behind a president's lover, his dog, wouldn't they? Well, Scottish listeners who might have enjoyed the mention of the camper van earlier will enjoy this bit because Roosevelt gave this speech in 1944 to the Teamsters.

And he said, I don't resent my attacks on me by the Republicans. My family don't resent them. But Fowler does resent them because Fowler is Scotch. And being a Scotty, as soon as he learned that Republican fiction writers had concocted this story, his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I have a right to resent and to object to libelous statements about my dog. So for Nixon to rip, to sort of basically not rip off this story, but to turn it into this populist kind of mawkish fable,

absolutely inflamed Democrats. So everybody would have picked up the reference? Oh, lots of people would. Yeah, lots of people would. Nixon was always incredibly mawkish, but it was a mawkishness that absolutely resonated with a lot of middle America. The funny thing is Nixon actually slightly resented it being remembered for the dog, because it was quite a long speech. So in his memoirs, he always calls it the fund speech. And he barely mentions Chequers at all. Whereas it's remembered as the Chequers speech.

And there's another bit of history with Nixon and dogs, Tom, because when Nixon did enter the White House, sadly, Chequers was dead. So Chequers is the most famous political dog of all time, but never actually got to go in the White House. So when Nixon goes in in 1969, his staff- He didn't stuff her. No, he didn't. His staff bought him a dog, an Irish Red Setter, whom Nixon called King Timahoe. So there were actually three dogs at that point in the White House, because Julie and Tricia still had dogs. They had dogs called Pasha and Vicky. But King Timahoe didn't initially take to Nixon.

So his staff had to leave. They led trails of biscuits all through the White House that led to the Oval Office, to Nixon's desk. And Nixon kept a tin of biscuits. So they bonded eventually, did they? They did bond eventually, I think. There were some stories that his staff, in an attempt to kind of appease the dog,

would throw biscuits around the Oval Office and they broke a clock with a dog biscuit. I don't know. Can you break a clock with a dog biscuit? It would have to be quite a heavy, heavy dog biscuit, wouldn't it? Well, it's the 70s, you know. Yeah, I don't know. Do they have dog biscuits in America?

Are they not dog cookies? Yeah. Do they call them dog biscuits? I think they do call them dog biscuits. They're just not consistent, Tom. I don't approve of it, but there you go. Can't be helped. Right, Dominic.

So that's our first one. You talked about Morkishness and you talked about Scotland. So listeners will probably be able to guess our second dog, which is probably Scotland's most famous dog, absolute star of Edinburgh tourism. And that, of course, is Greyfriars Bobby. Oh, yes. And this is actually quite a complicated story because... It's a shaggy dog story, Tom.

Well, is it? Are sky terriers shaggy? I'm not sure they are. No. Well, they're shaggy in comparison with humans, I suppose. Anyway, so Greyfriars Bobby, he's a sky terrier, very long lived, so 17 years. Supposed to have lived from 1855 to 1872. And as far as we can tell, the likeliest version of the story,

certainly the earliest, is that he belonged to a night watchman who was called John Gray, who was working for the police, so hence the name Bobby. Ah, nice. Which I'd never got before I read up on this. And John Gray was kind of, he was very very very on his up as working as a night watchman through the night was all he could get um he was basically i mean just above the bread line 1850s is it 1860s yeah 1850s yes so he'd come to edinburgh from the countryside he dies of tb

and he's buried in gray fryer's kirkyard which is just off the Royal Mile. And the story goes that every night, the 14 years that Bobby has left, he comes and sits on his master's grave to commemorate him. Oh, that's nice. And this becomes an absolute feature of Edinburgh life. People come and watch him. In due course, in 1867, an act is introduced that requires dogs to be licensed. And there isn't anyone around who can license Greyfriars Bobby. So the Lord Provost of Edinburgh himself pays for Bobby's dog license,

buys him a collar. And then when Greyfriars Bobby dies, he is buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard next to his dead master's grave. So it's all very, very touching. He went there every night for 14 years. This is the story. This is the story. How did he know it was his grave?'s grave. So it's all very, very touching. He went there every night for 14 years. This is the story. This is the story. How did he know it was his grave? Dominic, stop asking difficult questions. He did.

Okay. Not by the smell, surely. It's distinctive odour. Anyway, people are not asking difficult questions like that. They're completely taking it on trust. And by the time that he dies the story has has kind of spread far beyond edinburgh far beyond scotland so even in london a lady called lady burdett coots who is the granddaughter of the founder of the bank coots bank which i think the king is that's where he keeps his money isn't it yeah and uh lady burdett coots sets up a drinking fountain topped by a statue of Bobby opposite the entrance to the graveyard. And we've already mentioned Hobhouse's tribute to Bosun.

Here is another one. The inscription on this memorial is a tribute to the affectionate fidelity of Greyfriars Bobby in 1858. This faithful dog followed the remains of his master to Greyfriars Churchyard and lingered near the spot until his death in 1872. So there is the answer to your sceptical question. He followed the body. If Lady Burdick Cootes believes it, who am I to disagree? Or, Tom, is there a twist? Well, so you have noticed that perhaps there is something not entirely credible about this story. Over the course of the decades that follow, the story becomes basically better and better. Of course.

So the canonical story, the story that then kind of the various films that have been made um was the result of a story written by an american novelist and journalist called eleanor atkinson you had stowned me tom who in 1912 he wrote this up as a novel right and has a very very heartwarming description of gray fras bobby dawn he was only a little country dog the very youngest and smallest and shaggiest of sky terriers shaggiest i told you it was a shaggy dog story bred on a heathery slope of the pendland hills where the loudest sound was the bark of a collie or the tinkle of a sheep bell did she have the voice of marilyn monroe tom that's that's that's what Tom? That's what early 20th century American novelists

writing sentimental tales of Scottish dogs. I see now where Richard Nixon got his inspiration from the checker speech. So in this version, John Gray is actually called Old Jock. Of course he is. And the story in this is that he is taking Bobby to a place that did actually exist on

Candlemaker Row in Edinburgh, Trails Temperance Coffee House at one o'clock every day for lunch. And at one o'clock in Edinburgh, as people will know who visited it, a gun on Edinburgh Castle sounds. And after old Jock or John Gray or whatever we want to call him has died, whenever the gun goes off at one o'clock, Gray Fries Bobby comes to lunch at Trails Temperance Coffee House. And people turn up at Trails Temperance House to watch him. And this is the version that you get in the Disney film.

And it's also feeds into the Lassie film that was made. So he's not hanging around at the grave in this story. He is. He's hanging around at the grave and he's going for lunch. So he's got a busy social schedule right exactly yeah and so obviously the question is how true is any of this yeah eyebrows may be raised by the fact that the newspaper that first breaks the story back in 1864 is the the infinites courier which is also the newspaper that first breaks the story of the loch ness monster oh

it's only true it's definitely true but the thing is is that actually bobby was still alive then so unlike the loch ness monster we know that bobby did it did exist maybe the loch ness monster is alive there don't uh yeah but nobody's seen the loch ness monster whereas people were regularly seen this dog going for lunch people are going to see this dog exactly. Exactly. So there is clearly, there is a basis of truth, but there are clearly elements of it that isn't true. Right. So the story of him hearing the gun and going to the Trails Temperance Coffee House isn't true because the firing of the gun was inaugurated after it's supposed to have done.

Oh, wow. So essentially on the principle of Cui Bono, who's benefiting from this, you'd probably say that it's the owner of Trails Temperance Coffeehouse. Oh, yes, you would. So it may be that that entire thing began as a kind of scam originating with John Trail, who owned it. And the other question that skeptics have asked is, was there more than one dog? Because as I said, Greyfriars Bobby seems to have been very long lived for a stray dog in Edinburgh in the mid 19th century. So it's possible that he died and got replaced.

What's this Tom by the reed? Was he even a dog at all? Yeah, he's definitely a dog. No, the huge bombshell, the massive question is, was he actually a Sky Terrier? Because this is the latest development that took place only last year in 2022.

And it's been proposed by Mike, the brilliantly named Mike Macbeth, continuing the Scottish theme. Oh, that's unbelievable. He's actually Canadian. Mike Macbeth? Yes. That's his name? Yeah, that's his name.

Okay. I mean, if he's listening, I hope he's not offended. But he's not Scottish. He's the president of the Canadian Dandy Dinment Terrier Club. The what? And are you a fay Canadian Dandy Dinment Terrier Club. The what? And are you a fay with Dandy Dinments? No, I'm not.

Well, we actually had a Dandy Dinment when I was a child. What is it? They're very sweet terriers and they have kind of little tufts. They're grey and they have little tufts. Dandy Dinment is a dog? Yes. And it's named after a cat. Sounds like a nightclub hostess from the 1950s. No.

No, Dominic. It sounds like what it is. It sounds like a character from one of Walter Scott's novels. it's it sounds like what it is it sounds like a character from one of walter scott's novels okay so that's what it's named after he's a character who appears in in uh guy manning which is one of scott's novels and um they were bred in first bred in 1842 so every dandy denman terrier that there is in the in the world at the moment can trace his ancestry back to um the original Dandy Dinman, who was called Old Ginger.

Is that about the claim that everybody in Britain can trace their ancestry back to Edward III? No. Well, maybe it is. But in the case of Dandy Dinman, I remember that we got a scroll of paper showing the lineage for Jakey, our beloved Dandy Dinman, who I'm very happy to have a reason to mention. And Mike McBeth, who's president of the Canadian Dandy Dinman Terrier Club, thinks that perhaps Greyfriars Bobby was actually Dandy Dinman, who I'm very happy to have a reason to mention. And Mike McBeth, who's president of the Canadian Dandy Dinman Terrier Club, thinks that perhaps Greyfriars Bobby was actually a Dandy Dinman. What a bombshell. Yeah. Tom, golly. So this is what he says. There have been so many competing stories about Greyfriars Bobby that the truth has faded like the mist on an Edinburgh

morning. But the more I researched him for our book, The Dandy Dinman Terrier, The True Story of Scotland's Forgotten Breed, the facts led to only one conclusion, that Greyfriars Bobby had to be a Dandy Dinmont. What an extraordinary coincidence that he's the president of the Dandy Dinmont Club. But I don't think you can reasonably claim, Kenny, that Greyfriars Bobby is... I mean, if we're talking about significance, Chequers is much more significant than Greyfriars Bobby. Well, not if you're in the Edinburgh Tourist Board. No, no, admittedly. But if you're working for the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, there's only one contender. But Dominic, I'm recording this on the banks of the Tweed, or Tweed as we locals call it.

And so Edinburgh is much closer to me than California. Well, we'll agree to differ on that. I mean, I would say that Greyfriars Bobby is definitely one of the, I mean, absolutely very famous dog, don't you think? It's famous, but it's not significant in the evolution of populism, as Chequers is. Well, and talking about the evolution of populism. Yeah. Who's number three? Our third dog is, so we've had one dog owned by a sinister right-wing leader,

and now we have another, another dog owned by a sinister right-wing leader. Does Liz Truss have a dog? This is Blondie, who was owned by famous animal lover, Adolf Hitler. Tom, I can't believe you've gone there. Blondie is your number three. Well, Nixon, of course. Nixon. Hitler.

Hitler was a big dog lover, wasn't he? Well, our Democrats cheer. Because Hitler had been messing around with dogs in the trenches in World War I. Because in my adventure in time, Second World War, it's a great opportunity for me to advertise my excellent children's book in which um the fuhrer appears as a as a major character the book begins with hitler and um he's just a young man he's in the trenches and he has a dog and when i wrote the first draft of that chapter and i showed it to my son he said you've got to cut the dog because all children will assume that a young man yes it's a hero it He said, you've got to cut the dog because all children will assume that a young man with a dog…

Yes, it's the hero. It's the hero. And Hitler had a dog which was a Jack Russell, a white Jack Russell. Supposedly, initially the property of a British soldier, a Tommy, who had found its way into the trenches. And Hitler had adopted the dog and he called him… So he'd stolen it. He'd stolen an Englishman's pet.

Well, Hitler called him Fuschel, which means little fox. And he wrote, I think later, he says, how many times I used to study my dog Fuschel. I used to watch him as if he was a man. It was crazy how fond I was of that beast. And the story is that in 1917, Hitler moves down the line. His regiment moved to Alsaceace i think and um a railroad official offers nixon some money for the dog and nixon says no you can you could offer me 200 000 marks i wouldn't part with him but then when they come to leave nick uh have i called him nixon again anyway yes oh no terrible this is terrible. Hitler goes off and he leaves.

He can't find the dog. And he assumes the railroad official may have stolen him. He never sees the dog again. Oh. And, Tom, this is a great what if of history, isn't it? Yes. If Hitler had found that dog. Maybe he'd have been a nicer person.

Maybe. Maybe. Maybe his demons wouldn't have been quite so murderous. Exactly. But he had lots of dogs, actually. He was very into German shepherds, which were hugely popular with the kind of nationalist right. Absolutely. Because they were Aryan dogs, if that's such a thing. Well, so their full name is Canis lupus familiaris.

And lupus, of course, is wolf in Latin. And the Nazis were very, very into dogs who were close to wolves because wolves were seen as belonging to the primordial German forest and embodying Aryan kind of values of ferocity and strength and things like that. And the most famous of all the German shepherds owned by Hitler was one that Martin Bormann, who also loved German shepherds, gave him in 1941. And this is Blondie. Yeah. He loved Blondie, didn't he?

He did. And Blondie featured a lot in Nazi propaganda. So Hitler was always kind of shown with Blondie, kept her by his side in his various retreats and things like that. And in 1945, when he goes to the bunker, he takes Blondie with him into the bunker and lets her sleep on the bed, which Ava Brown was not keen on at all. She had dogs of her own, though. Scottish Terriers again. Okay.

One of whom, weirdly, was called Starzy. Starzy. Strange. Starzy is the East German. Yeah, secret police. There's a Graham hancock series in this tom yeah so why do why did they name their security service after a dog owned by hitler's wife because blonde is not a good name for a security service i suppose that's true yes i

suppose that's true anyway so um march 1945 even as the uh the soviets are closing in blondie has a whole litter of puppies, which is lovely of Hitler. But then 29th of April, he knows it's all over. He's got the cyanide. He's not certain it's going to work. Yeah. And so he tries it out on Blondie.

It does work. He's absolutely distraught when Blondie dies. Which he thinks was going to happen. I mean, that's madness. Give a dog cyanide. Well, I suppose part of him would have wanted it to work because then he'd know that he'd be able to commit suicide and he wouldn't be captured.

But I guess the other half of him, he'd be very sad at losing Blondie, who he obviously adored. And then the 30th of April, Hitler commits suicide, Ava as well. And after they're both dead, their guards get the puppies that blondies just delivered and shoot them all oh my god and they get burned with the bodies of they burn the dogs as well hitler and

ava yeah because the bodies fell into the possession of the red army and it's crazy well i don't know what happened to starzy it's an odd one isn't it choosing hitler's dog because it humanizes hitler i mean actually what my son said about having Hitler with a dog in the children's history book was right in a way. It's interesting how possession of an animal, having a relationship with an animal does humanize people, even terrible villains. I think it's interesting that people are fascinated by Hitler and his dogs because we think of Hitler as inhuman, as cold, as unfeeling. And to see him... But isn't it a part of it? You say inhuman as cold as unfeeling and just show i'd see him you know but isn't isn't it a part of it you say inhuman i mean famously he's vegetarian because he doesn't want to to eat the meat of dead animals like you tom like me um well i'm not really i eat fish as well don't care about fish

um i mean the thing the thing is isn't it that it it's Hitler's devotion to animals rather than to humans that is so unsettling about him? Yeah. In a way, it humanizes him. But in another way, it kind of just intensifies the spendthrift way in which he destroys millions and millions of people's lives without care. That's actually a good point. It probably is more unsettling than if he was, because if he was complete, had no emotions at all. He was just evil. Yes.

Yeah. It's more unsettling. Agreed. Tom, we've spent so long talking about these dogs that we're going to run out of time. We've got four more to come. Yeah. God, I can't wait.

So, listen, join us after the break for more of history's greatest dogs. Woof, woof. Oh, Tom. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews,

splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. We are talking dogs with top dog lover

Tom Holland. Tom, I believe you've got an apology to make to the listeners. Is that right? I do have an apology to make. So you may have been hearing a strange creaking sound. And that strange creaking sound comes from the chair of our friends who are still up in Scotland at the moment. And we have no Wi-Fi on our side of the Tweed. So I cross over and I'm using theirs. It's definitely the chair, Tom. And it is definitely the chair. And not the ghost of your dandy Dinmont dog. Jakey.

Oh, I wish it was. Bless him. You've got four dogs and you've got half an hour. Four dogs. Yes. So the fourth one. So there are a lot of kind of mystic, legendary dogs. I could have chosen Argus, who was the dog of Odysseus, very famous. You remember the story that Odysseus has been away, the Trojan War for 10 years, and then he's been wandering around the Mediterranean for another 10 years. And he arrives back in Ithaca disguised as a beggar, and no one recognizes him except for Argus, his old dog who's been thrown out by the evil suitors

from the palace and is lying on a dung heap. And as Odysseus walks by cunningly disguised as a beggar, he looks up, recognizes him, whimpers, licks his hand and dies. So very moving. But I'm not including him because Argus didn't actually exist okay instead on the whole kind of mythic legendary dog front i've gone for one who might have existed might so so it's a great story and this dog is called gellert and gellert is supposed to have been owned by luellen the great who was the great welsh prince in the first half of the 13th century king of gwynedd yeah the last great flourishing of independent wales before the conquest bade in the first half of the 13th century. King of Gwynedd. Yeah. The last great flourishing of independent Wales before the conquest paired with the first. And the story goes that Llywelyn the Great, he has a little baby boy.

The baby boy is left in a crib, guarded by Gellert, who is his dog. And Llywelyn the Great goes out hunting, leaves Gellert behind to stand guard over his son. Llywelyn has a great day out shooting deer or whatever it is he's doing. Comes back and he finds Gellert lying next to an empty crib and Gellert has blood all over his jaws. And so Llewellyn leaps to the logical conclusion that Gellert has eaten the baby. And so he draws his sword and slices off Gellert's head, cleans his sword, wanders into the next room. And there he hears the cries of his baby son. And he looks round and there is a dead wolf, which had attacked the child, but been killed by Gellert. So Gellert had

actually died defending the baby boy. And that's why he had blood all over his jaws and llewellyn of course is absolutely crippled with remorse and sense of bereavement yeah and he buries the dog with tremendous ceremony and the story goes that from that point on he never smiled again crikey that is a sad story isn't it it is a sad story, isn't it? It is a sad story. The thing that slightly worries me about that story is I think I've heard that story before in other contexts. Like what? I don't know, but it just seems to me like a very... You can't bring your scepticism to such a moving tale and not be able to justify it.

That feels to me like an Icelandic saga stroke Greek myth dog story. No. Do you not think? No, it definitely happened to ellen and the proof of that is that it was written up in a splendid poem in the 18th century by a guy called william roberts spencer he kind of hung out with the wigs with charles james fox and all the lads oh yeah holland house prince regent sheridan holland house all that kind of thing and he wrote um a great poem about this shall i read a section of it i think you should read the whole poem frankly i can't because it's enormously long it's one of

those 18th century very long poems right okay so this is after llewellyn has come in and he's full of remorse and yeah he raises a tomb for gellert and it stands in the forest and here never could the spearman past or forester unmoved here oft the tear besprinkled grass Llewellyn's sorrow proved and here he hung his horn and spear and there as evening fell in fancy's ear he oft would hear poor Gellert's dying yell and till great Snowdon's rocks grow old and cease the storm to brave the consecrated spot shall hold the name of gellert's grave tom i think there was a bit of a tremble in your voice during some of that poem because it's very moving isn't it it's so moving poor gellert and our welsh listeners sometimes complain that we don't do enough welsh history i think that they will feel that we've more than adequately... That beautiful reading from an English poem.

Well, we're English as well. We're paying homage to the glories of the splendid Welsh dog. Okay, very good. I enjoyed that, Gellert. I don't believe Gellert existed, but I enjoyed the poem nonetheless. So give us a dog that did exist. Well, the next dog is a Pekingese. Okay.

In fact, it's the very first Pekingese that was brought to Britain. It was brought to Britain in 1861. And it's a story that doesn't reflect tremendously well on Britain. Oh, Tom, do you think we do this podcast to hear this sort of nonsense? And when I tell you that the Pekingese was given to Queen Victoria and she named it Luti. You may be able to guess how and why this dog was obtained when I remind you that in 1860, so the year before it arrives back in Britain, an Anglo-French force had marched on Beijing, on Peking, as they called it then, and sacked the old Summer Palace. Oh yeah, the burning of the Summer Palace. Very great scene in Flashman. Right. So you know all about it from Flashman. So just tell us about the sack of the Summer Palace. Oh yeah, the burning of the Summer Palace. Very great scene in Flashman. Right, so you know all about it from Flashman.

So just tell us about the sack of the Summer Palace. So it's the Second Opium War. Yeah, so okay. So the Summer Palace was the, it's such a terrible cliche, but I'm going to say it anyway. It was the jewel in the crown of the Chinese Empress' possessions.

It's got these magnificent gardens and pavilions. It's absolutely stuffed with treasures, with artworks, with vases, with all this sort of stuff. Because it's basically, it's absolutely stuffed with treasures with artworks with vases with all this sort of stuff because it's basically it's the british museum crossed with what regent's park yeah i guess so and crossed with buckingham palace i suppose if you can imagine it all in one complex yeah it's the second opium war the chinese had seized the allied negotiators the delegates and they tortured them and stuff it's absolutely superbly done the

pathos of it in george mcdonald fraser's novel because lord elgin who's the son of yes the lord elgin as in the path of frases he basically orders the destruction of the summer palace in retribution for what's happened sort of allied the european negotiators and the british and french just basically storm in they burn they smash they steal they kind of level the whole thing they they actually general gordon probably the preeminent friend of the rest is history he was present at the sack of the he was appalled by it wasn't he was he said it made one's heart sore as in sore as in painful yeah to see the burning of all the artworks and the gold ornaments being destroyed and the things being torn down and vases smashed, but also people making off for tons and Britain to bandits. So it was seen at the time as a pretty shocking thing to have done. And so that's why the idea of looting is kind of very much in the air and why

Queen Victoria, when she's presented with this little dog, kind of makes a joke of it. So it was found by a guy called John Hart Dunn, who was a military man, served in the Crimean War, very patriotic. When he was out in China, serving with the French, he would make a point whenever they captured somewhere of running up the Union Jack before the tricolor could be raised over concrete forts. And so he's there in the Summer Palace. And he wrote this autobiography later, and he described looting Luti. And he described her as a pretty little dog, smaller than any King Charles, a real Chinese sleeve dog. It had silver bells around its neck and people say it is the most perfect little beauty they ever saw. And so he takes this little dog. I mean, it has to be said in exactly the same way

that the Chinese, when they go on imperial adventures, bring animals back. Like the Romans, the Chinese had been kind of bringing animals as evidence of their conquests as evidence of their triumphs back to their capital and now basically john hart dunn is doing the same because he takes this piccanese back to england on the voyage home he has a kind of cap and he has a little piccanese sleep in it and he presents it to queen victoria and victoria i'm afraid to say slightly disgr herself, not only by giving her the name that she gives the dog. This is honest. I guess it is honest, but she doesn't look after Lutie at all well.

So Lutie is a palace dog and therefore is used to being fed delicate, you know, perfectly cooked portions of chicken. Delicious, soft, light rice. But Queen Victoria feeds her on offal, which is very declassé. I think it's trying to build the dog up. And Lutie is painted by a German student of Edwin Landseer, as in Monarch of the Glen. Yeah. Very popular painter with Queen Victoria. But then once she's been painted, she gets taken away to the kennels in Windsor and Queen Victoria basically ignores her. And she died in 1872

and is buried in an unmarked grave. So I guess if you wanted a metaphor, if you were straining, if you were being harsh on the British Empire, Lutie would be quite a good metaphor. Okay. Tom, can you remedy this with a more patriotic dog? Yes, I absolutely can. Because obviously we are a very patriotic dog. Yes. Good. I absolutely can. Splendid. Because obviously we are a very patriotic podcast, and so I didn't want to leave it on that note. No. So now we come to very much a friend of the show, Admiral Collingwood, who people who

listen to our episode on the Battle of Trafalgar will remember. Cuthbert Collingwood, hero of the Battles of St. Vincent, Trafalgar, kind of Nelson's right-hand man, friend, successor. And again, I'm up here in, well, I've crossed the Tweed. So I was in Scotland and now I'm in England, in the northeast of England, which is very much where Cuthbert Collingwood came from. So he was born and raised in Newcastle. Named after St. Cuthbert, Tom.

It all stitches together. Yeah. So anyway, so he's very much a naval man. In 1790, he is given Bounce, this little puppy. What's Bounce? Not entirely sure. Oh, okay. So basically a generic dog.

A generic dog. Okay. People can use their imaginations. He could be massive. He could be tiny. I don't think he's massive. I don't think he's tiny. I don't think he's massive.

I think he's kind of- A medium dog. He's a medium dog. He's an average dog. Yeah, okay. And 1790, when Collingwood gets Bounce, he is due to go off on a trip to the Caribbean. And so he takes Bounce with him and he writes back to his wife and says that Bounce is a very good dog, delights in the ship, swims after him whenever he goes in the boat.

So it's good to know that Bounce is getting his sea legs. And from that point on, whenever Collingwood goes to sea he takes bounce with him bounce isn't entirely suited i mean he's he's fine he's got sea legs but he's not entirely suited to um naval engagements because he doesn't like loud noises no dog does dogs hate fireworks i don't know what they would make of a cannon exactly so having loads of cannon firing. So whenever there's a battle being fought, Bounce kind of went below decks and kind of hid beneath a blanket. And after the battle, Collingwood would go and find Bounce. Bounce would be shaking and shivering under his blanket, deep in the bowels of the ship. And Collingwood would pick Bounce up, stroke him and sing him a beautiful lullaby, which was adapted from famous lines in much do about nothing shakespeare's play and it went sigh no more bouncy sigh no more dogs were deceivers never though now you put one foot

on shore trust your master ever then sigh not so but let us go where dinner's daily ready converting all the sounds of woe to high fiddly diddy to high fiddly diddy so we've had some great poetry on this episode. We have. That doesn't strike the martial note for me, Tom, I have to say. But that's what's so charming about Collingwood. Yeah, I guess so. He's a hard man in battle, wins a lot of battles, but loves his dog.

Yeah. And when he's back at home, he's not at home often because he's off fighting Napoleon. But when he is there, he lives in Morpeth outside newcastle he goes for walks over the hills takes bounce with him and wherever he goes he reaches into his pocket for some acorns and he plants them so that they will grow into oaks so that say in 2023 yeah britain will be able to chop down oaks and make great ships make. Oh, this is the moment. So Collingwood's oaks that he planted with Bounce are still standing, are they? Yes.

Oh, splendid. You know, they're ready to be chopped down and turned into ships of the line right now. Great. Very good. So Bounce is with Collingwood when Collingwood goes over to HMS Victory, to Nelson's cabin to discuss the battle plans before Trafalgar. So Bounce is there. I mean, obviously, in the battle itself, he's below decks, shivering underneath a blanket. I mean, he probably doesn't contribute

much to the discussion, presumably. Well, I suppose he kind of... he probably provides inspiration to the British captains. An example of a British dog. Yeah, British pluck. The bulldog spirit. I mean, he's not a bulldog, but he could be a bulldog because we don't know what he is. I imagine he's not a French poodle. No, British pluck. The bulldog spirit. I mean, he's not a bulldog, but he could be a bulldog because we don't know what he is. I imagine he's not a French poodle.

No, definitely not. That would be very bad. Not some fancy Frenchified dandy dog. Well, although, Dominic, so after the Battle of Trafalgar, he becomes Baron Collingwood of Calderburn and Hethpool in the county of Northumberland, which means, of course, that Bounce has been elevated. Collingwood writes back to his family saying that he's all out of patience with Bounce. The consequential airs he gives himself since he became a right honourable dog are insufferable. He considers it beneath his dignity to play with commonest dogs and truly thinks that he does them grace when he cons to lift up his leg against them. So that's quite sad. Is Collingwood serious? No, it's naval banter, Dominic. Right, okay, just checking. Four years after Trafalgar, Bounce is getting very old.

He's become rheumatic and he falls overboard and drowns. Oh, my God. You can't just come out with that, Tom, with no preparation. Well, so Collingwood was distraught and again wrote back and said what a huge loss Bounce was. I have few comforts but he was one for he loved me everybody sorrows for him he was wiser than many who hold their heads higher and was grateful to those who were kind to him this is one of our most poignant podcasts well it gets even more poignant because the crew on collingwood's ship yeah even though they couldn't

give bounce a proper naval burial because obviously he'd fallen overboard and drowned. They make a small coffin the size of the dog and they drape it in a Union Jack and then they give it a burial at sea. Good for them. That reflects very well on the Royal Navy. And they then pull into, they go to the Balearicas, they pull into Mallorca and the crew buy Collingwood a new Bounce.

They dress him as a sailor with an ex-scarf. An ex-scarf. He would apparently parade with the Marines. I don't want to alienate our American listeners, so I know we're very keen on this, but I don't really approve of dog in clothes. No, well. So dressing him as a sailor, I don't approve of. Yeah, I hear you.

But the fact remains that Bounce 2 stayed on board ship even after Collingwood himself had died. Really? And so what happened to Bounce, the junior? I don't know. He just kind of looked like he became the ship dog. Okay. So that's a stirring and happy story, I think.

That is a nice story. And you've got one more to go, Tom. So I still think Checkers is the best dog, but that's because I'm biased. But Bounce, I have to say, is right up there. It's very, very close. But could our final dog storm through to the title? I think you'd agree that all of these dogs would make great films yeah well in fact great fries bobby has

been a film but the final dog is a dog who was in loads of films as an actor um and that is rintin tin oh yeah very good choice who was again a german shepherd dog. An extraordinary story. So Rintintin is a German shepherd dog, but is born in France on the Western Front in 1918, as the Allies are kind of pushing forward and the Germans are starting to retreat. And during this great push, the Americans are rolling the German lines up. And a guy called Corporal Lee Duncan, who is in the US Army Air Service, is sent forward with a group of other men to secure a French village called Fleury to see if, that the Germans have fled. But there, there is a kennel. And in the kennel, there is a German shepherd and she has just given birth to a litter of five tiny puppies. And they're so small that they haven't even opened their eyes yet. Duncan rescues the dogs, the mother and the puppies, and he brings them back to his unit. And he gives away all the dogs, including the mother and the puppies, and he brings them back to his unit. And he gives away all the dogs, including the mother and the puppies, but he keeps two, a boy and a girl.

And he calls the boy Rin Tin Tin, and he calls the girl Nanette. Actually, Rin Tin Tin is probably Ran Tan Tan, actually, because these were good luck charms that were given to American soldiers by children in Franceance so ran tan tan and lanette i did not know yeah oh han tan tan would not have been a name for a film star no so rintin tin he becomes because duncan smuggles the two puppies aboard the troop ship when they go back in 1919 i suppose they're not puppies by then are they they're no kind of whatever adolescent frisky adolescent dogs frisky adolescent i mean must be tricky to keep them on the troop ship anyway he gets him he smuggles them across um they get to

america nanette very sadly i think dies in new york i think he gets quarantined and dies and so duncan buys another dog nanette too it's a bit like we've had bounce too we have nanette too he comes from California, from Los Angeles, and he takes Rin Tin Tin and Nanette with him back to LA. And when he gets to LA, he teaches Rin Tin Tin all kinds of tricks. And the particular thing that Rin Tin Tin can do is to jump enormous heights. And this obviously in LA, in Hollywood, where producers are always looking for kind of exciting stunts and things that they can put into the movies, this becomes something that attracts

the casting directors. And so in 1922, Rin Tin Tin is actually cast as a wolf in a film called The Man from Hell's River. And he plays the wolf tremendously well. So much so that the following year in 1923, he gets his first lead and he appears in 27 movies in all. He is such a star that he comes to be called the mortgage lifter by people in Hollywood. Because he makes films that enables people to pay off their mortgages.

That's a good name. And actually, the guy whose career really gets a lift from Rin Tin Tin is Daryl F. Zanuck, who is the guy who goes on to become the head of 20th Century Fox. So he starts his career as a screenwriter and he writes- For Rin Tin Tin? Yeah, he writes screenplays for Rin Tin Tin. And the story is that in 1929, when they have the first Oscars ceremonyplays for Rin Tin Tin. And the story is that in 1929, when they have the first Oscars ceremony, that Rin Tin Tin is actually,

he gets voted best actor. And the organisers of the Oscars are not going to have that. And so he gets disqualified. I think that's actually an urban myth. That sounds utterly implausible. That's great for us Bobby standards of veracity. Gellert.

Meanwhile, Rin Tin Tin, he's a Hollywood star, so he's That's great for us, Bobby. Standards of veracity. Gellert. Yeah. Meanwhile, Rin Tin Tin, you know, he's a Hollywood star. So he's having a great time with Nanette, hanging out with Nanette. So hold on, Nanette's not his sister. This isn't a Ptolemy style arrangement. There's a slight Ptolemaic vibe there because she's a replacement for the sister. Okay. But that's quite Hollywood, isn't it? I mean, it's quite Hollywood.

I suppose so. So they have 48 puppies. 48? Yeah. But how many would you have in one go? I'm not familiar with... I don't know. Dog biology is, you know, a mystery to me. They're obviously very fond of each other. They're having a lot of fun by the pool,

hanging out, keeping his Oscar. And then he dies in August 1932. And weirdly, his body is sent back to France. That is kind of strange. It's buried in a pet cemetery outside Paris. Oh yeah, the Cimetière des Chiens et Autres Animaux Domestiques. Yeah, they're very same. I wonder what else is buried in that. I don't know.

If we have any listeners who know who else, what other famous animals might be buried in that. But Rin Tin Tin was unbelievably famous. So Anne Frank, in her diary, actually the second entry in her diary, writes of saying that she longed to have a dog like Rin Tin Tin. The thing about Rin Tin Tin is that he's very energetic. He's an outdoors dog. He's jumping off walls and doing stunts and things like that. And it's so sad that Anne Frank is, I mean, that's kind of the pathos of it.

Yeah. That she's locked up and pining for a dog. Pining for a dog. Rin Tin Tin obviously predates lassie i mean lassie was the cinematic dog that i was most familiar with growing up rintintin is the trailblazer yeah lassie's a pale shadow of rintintin i suppose i don't know i mean it's being too harsh to lassie no i think you're a bit harsh to lassie if i was ranking visual dogs i'd put canine first and then r Tin Tin and then Lassie.

I like a robot dog. Yeah, I hear you. I don't know whether Lassie has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame because Rin Tin Tin does. Really? Do you want to do some live research? Sure. And see whether Lassie's got one.

I bet, I mean, canine wouldn't have one. So canine, we should explain for non-British listeners who are not very old, was Tom Baker's dog in Doctor Who. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was tom baker's dog in doctor who yeah yeah yeah so it was a mechanized dog it's a bit like r2d2 only it looked like a dog so tom i have a great fact for you i've done my life research yeah not on wikipedia as some very cruel people sometimes allege about this podcast but on the los angeles times so i've gone straight to the source yeah and what was it saying there are three dogs on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Okay.

So Rintintin, I'm guessing Lassie. So they're Lassie, Rintintin, and Strongheart. Now, do you know who Strongheart is? No, never heard of Strongheart. Strongheart was also a veteran of the First World War. Strongheart served with the German Red Cross in World War I. And in those days, actually, it had a very distinguished name. Strongheart was known as Etzel von Oeringen. Goodness. But actually had a very distinguished name. Strongheart was

known as Etzel von Oeringen. Goodness. But I don't know anything else about Strongheart. What did Strongheart do? What were the films? Well, I'm going to do some more live research. Here we are. Now I am on Wikipedia. Etzel von Oeringen, better known as Strongheart, 1917 to 1929, was a male, another German shepherd, third in his class at the Shepherd Dog Club of America, 1920, was trained as a police dog in Berlin, served in the Red Cross, sold to America, and then appears in one, two, three, four, six films. Well, that's not very impressive compared to Rin Tin Tin's 27.

Yeah, but makes his debut, Tom, before Rin Tin Tin. So 1921, The Silent Call. So he is Cliff Richard to Rin Tin Tin's Beatles. Very much so. Edsel van Oeringen, I call him by his real name, immense in body and hind leg formation, in body and legs better than either of the dogs above him. This is at the dog show. So a very impressive dog, Tom.

Did he ever appear with rintintin no imagine that born in wrocław in germany uh later in poland died in los angeles his body was not returned to europe unlike rintintin but he was the subject of a book called strong heart the story of a wonder dog it's interesting though isn't it because i mean it's a bit like charlie chaplin or boris karloff europeans going over and becoming big, big Hollywood stars. They're both the dogs. We should have adopted that as the theme of this podcast. We should have narrowed it down and had a more focused podcast on emigre dogs in Hollywood in the 1920s.

I strongly disagree. I think that all seven of these dogs have been splendid. And so I mentioned that Laker. Yeah, we're going to do another on that we are also going to do another dog dominic who didn't appear and i'm surprised you didn't pick me up on that and that is boy who was the dog owned by prince rupert who had necromantic powers could catch bullets in his mouth yes am i right yes but his necromantic powers were inadequate against oliver cromwell's iron signs the battle of marston moore and the reason that i left boy off is that i'm sure we'll be talking about him when we do our special on the English Civil War, which we will be doing. 12 part epic.

Yeah, one day. So, Tom, if you could choose one dog of these dogs, which do you choose? Oh, I think Bounce. Really? Yeah. You like a naval dog? Yeah. And a patriotic dog?

I like a patriotic dog. Part of me would actually love to have a dog called Looty. I know that presents me in a very bad light. It does present you in a very bad light. And I can imagine, Dominic, that were some of your critics to be listening to that, they would not be surprised. But of course, they won't be listening to this. They'd rather boil their heads.

All right. Well, that was a splendid, what is it? A kind of gamble through. Yes, a walk. We've taken you for a walk through history's greatest dogs. So what will we be back with next week? I don't think we will be in the animal kingdom, will we? We will be back with the fall of Saigon.

Crikey. So no, less of the canine theme banter and more of the, oh my God, we should warn people right now. You do your Marlon Brando impersonation in that series, don't you? Yes, I do. The single most remarkable impersonation. It's very kind. I'm using that phrase very advisedly that you've ever done in the history of The Rest

Is History. Thank you. Even more remarkable than Marilyn Monroe, you think? Even more remarkable than Marilyn Monroe. So it's a two-parter. Thank you. Even more remarkable than Marilyn Monroe, you think? Even more remarkable than Marilyn Monroe. So it's a two-parter. It's on the fall of Saigon, and it's on the Vietnam Syndrome and the legacy of the end of the Vietnam War in 70s America. So that's something to look forward to.

Lots of treats to come after that. Tom, that was a tour de force. Thank you. Thank you very much for that, and we'll see you next time. Goodbye. Bye-bye. thank you very much for that and we'll see you next time goodbye bye thanks for listening to the rest is history for bonus episodes early access ad-free listening and access to our chat community please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde.

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