It’s been a bad month for dogs, first there were reports of the fatal poisoning of a prize-winning Crufts dog, and now there will be no canine lead in the new series of Downton Abbey.
Downton fans were left outraged last year after the Grantham family’s beloved Labrador Isis was killed off during the fifth series of the period drama. Conspiracy theories soon developed claiming that the poor dog was the latest victim of the Islamic State, suggesting that the dog had been axed as a result of the unfortunate name similarity between her and the terrorist group. However, Hugh Bonneville, who plays Lord Grantham, says that anyone who believes that this is the reason Isis was killed off is a ‘complete berk’.
Now a new theory has come to Steerpike’s attention, posing that rather than a terrorist being behind Isis’s exit, mere inter-canine relations could have been to blame. A
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