Our ‘Chiswick’s Top Dogs’ exhibition was displayed at Clare Balding’s talk at Chiswick House & Gardens and in St Michael & All Angels Church. It is now closed. It named the dog in the foreground of ‘The Royal Garden Party at Chiswick’ (detail above, Royal Collection Trust).
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To mark the 20th anniversary of Chiswick House Dog Show and several celebrity dog appearances at the Chiswick Book Festival (above), we held a ‘Chiswick’s Top Dogs’ Quiz. The prize was a 1904 edition of ‘A Dog’s Day’ from Foster Books (below). Entries closed on Sunday September 29th 2024 and it was won by Dr Alison Baker, a previous Chiswick Book Festival quiz winner. The answers are given below.
1. Who hosted a party for 300 ‘top dogs’ of British society in the gardens of Chiswick House? Prince of Wales, later Edward VII
2. What is the name of the dog in the foreground of the painting ‘The Royal Garden Party at Chiswick’? Sharp
3. What is the name of the spaniel given to Queen Victoria by the Duke of Devonshire on one of her visits to Chiswick House? Bony
4. Which other dog is commemorated with a tomb near the Amphitheatre in Chiswick House Gardens, and who are the dog’s likeliest owners? Lilly + Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and/or Bess
5. What is the name of William Hogarth’s pug and where can you see a statue of them together? Trump + Chiswick High Road
6. Which other dog is commemorated in the Mulberry Garden at Hogarth’s House? Pompey
7. Cecil Aldin is the illustrator of A Dog Day, a 1904 edition of which has been donated as the first prize for this quiz by Stephen Foster of Foster Books. Where in Chiswick was Aldin photographed with four dogs in the 1890s? Bedford Park
8. Who said that A Dog Day was ‘one of my favourite books of all time’? Jilly Cooper
