In 1995, Her Majesty was heard to remark that the worst aspect of the Parker Bowles divorce was that she had got Danny back. Danny was a corgi given to Camilla and me by the Queen in the early 1990s. She had previously given us a corgi called Windsor Flame who was wonderful, intelligent and brave. Danny had none of these qualities. He was short in looks, legs and temper. After the divorce he returned to Windsor, where he spent the rest of his life, very happy, in the care of Mrs Nancy Fenwick, who was unofficially the keeper of the Queen’s dogs.
I came to realise how much the Queen’s dogs meant to her, how much she loved them and how very knowledgeable she was about them. She owned more than 30 corgis during her lifetime. Animal psychologist Dr Roger Mugford, after watching Her Majesty feed her dogs, each in turn, eldest first, wrote: ‘There is barely anyone on the planet who could achieve that control over their dogs.
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