THE CORGI AND THE QUEEN

An introduction to the British royal families—human and canine.

Perry begins with the recently deceased Elizabeth II, seen here as a young girl. Elizabeth “wasn’t a storybook princess” even after her father became king, and after bonding with a corgi pup she named Susan, Elizabeth trained to be an auto mechanic in World War II. During the war, Susan guarded her charge “like a precious lamb,” and afterward, along with often finding herself “in the doghouse” for mischievous pranks in the palace, had pups of her own named Sugar and Honey. Meanwhile, Elizabeth married, became queen, and—though Susan eventually stopped barking and was buried—went on to own at least 30 corgis, many of them Susan’s descendants. “Susan’s legacy lives on,” the author concludes. As evidence, she closes with two multigenerational family trees—from Victoria and Albert to Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor (b. 2021) on one, and from Susan to Willow (d. 2018) on the other, with an utterly precious note about a hybrid line of “dorgis” co-founded by a dachshund parent. Corry supplies cleanly drawn scenes of smiling, stubby legged, solid-looking orange dogs and slender, upright royals, both in regal poses, surrounded on public occasions by racially diverse crowds of attentive onlookers. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A sweet sidelight cast on Britain’s longest reigning monarch and her furry, four-legged retinue.