The joy of finding people who love the same books you do

I USED to think of myself as a minor sort of Anglophile. As a child I knew the names of all six wives of Henry VIII – and other random details of English royal history – because I loved Masterpiece Theatre. In college, I watched the courtship of Charles and Diana in real time. Nearly 40 years later, I watched their Netflix counterparts make the same calamitous mistake in The Crown. And yet, of the nonstop television coverage of the actual queen’s actual death, I watched not a single minute. Well, she was old, I thought. She had a good run. So much for being an Anglophile.

Then I saw a picture of the royal corgis waiting for their queen’s funeral procession, and my cold American heart melted just a tiny bit.

Those sad corgis sent me to my bookcase thinking of a line at the beginning of The Uncommon Reader, a moving and hilarious novella by the British playwright Alan Bennett: “It was the dogs’ fault.”