Labrador: The Story of the World’s Favourite Dog. Ben Fogle

or even eat the bird before delivery to the handler are considered ‘hard-mouthed’.

      ‘If the Labrador possesses the qualities assigned to it by James Craw (at one time gamekeeper at Hirsel and Netherby), viz sagacity, stamina, perseverance, quickness and nose, then no other variety can come up to the Labradors,’ he wrote. ‘The only fault that he had to find with some of them – a fault common to all other varieties of retriever – was that they were a bit hard in the mouth. Gamekeepers and shooting men required a dog that could retrieve birds and game without piercing the skin with their teeth. I have always thought Labradors have one of the softest of bites; indeed, I have even seen Labradors carry fresh, unboiled eggs in their mouths while running.

      Controversy, however, has frequently arisen concerning this matter, but supporters often point out that this trait spans the retriever group as a whole. Sometimes hunger just takes over.

      Townend Barton reasoned ‘the Labrador was one of the best dogs in existence for a gamekeeper, most of which like their dogs to look ‘well and fit’ at the opening of the shooting season, without needing to devote much attention to them during the busy time, which necessarily precedes it on estates where hand-rearing of pheasants is carried on to any extent.’

      Barton gives his ‘strong recommendation of the breed to shooting men’ on the eve of the First World War. The sixth Earl of Malmesbury recalls the estate keeper, Mr Beech, being called up into the Royal Artillery and ‘… the [Labrador] bitch he left behind pined so much that she sadly died. As a child I just remember her. She was the last of the direct descendants of the dogs imported in 1823.’

      In the middle of the war, in 1916, the Labrador Retriever Club was founded by Lord Knutsford (then the Honourable Arthur Holland-Hibbert) and Lady Howe (then Mrs Quintin Dick), with a Mr T. W. Twyford of Staffordshire, to champion the breed, and Labs suddenly became the fashion. In 1916 the club authored the first Labrador Retriever standard. In the 1920s and 30s, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth promoted Labradors at shows through their kennel, and the King entered dogs in Crufts. In 1938, King George became Patron of the Labrador Retriever Club. In 1952, on the death of George VI, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother continued as patron. Today, the Her Majesty the Queen is Patron of the Club and the Duke of Wellington is President.

      The Hon Henry Holland-Hibbert, great grandson of the 3rd Viscount Knutsford, still has the stud book that traces the foundation of the famous Munden line of Labradors and, according to records, the original kennel is still intact on the Munden Estate.

      It’s strange how trails can lead you in circles. I had already traversed the Atlantic Ocean in an effort to understand more about the breed I love so much, and now I found myself navigating the North Circular around west London towards Munden House, a 30-room eighteenth-century mansion located in the suburbs of London, just off the M1. The seat of the Viscount Knutsfords since 1874, the estate is an oasis of rural calm in the embrace of one of the most urbanised parts of the United Kingdom. There is no great gatehouse, pomp or ceremony; a tiny gate leads the way through barley fields to the manor house.

      Henry Holland-Hibbert moved into Munden in 1992, where his father, Michael Knutsford, is the current 6th Viscount Knutsford. Henry’s wife, Kate Holland-Hibbert, met me at the top of the drive. She was wearing an earpiece because the house has become popular as a film, television and fashion shoot location and an army of film coordinators had temporarily taken over the grounds. Kate was keeping an ear on proceedings. She invited me into her warm kitchen where a black Labrador was stretched out next to the Aga. On the walls were paintings and portraits of various breeds of dog. Both Henry and his father, Michael, then welcomed me warmly, as did the Labrador. Under strict Knutsford folklore, every Labrador belonging to the family must be given a name beginning with S. For the current Labs, the family had voted on Smudge and Scooby Doo.

      There on the kitchen table was the stud book that I had come to see. Saucy, Sarah, Scottie, Sahib, Sober, Sceptre, Sermon, Sandfly … the list went on into the hundreds. It was an impressive list of ‘S’ names.

      No one remembers why the tradition began, but the family dutifully continues it into the present day. What was more telling, though, was the straightforward approach that had been taken towards the estate’s dogs in previous decades. Next to each entry was a comment box, and several struck me in particular: ‘Picked up poison and died’ read one entry; ‘Distemper’ read many more; ‘Died, Swallowed a bone’. Others were a little more brutal. ‘Well shot’ and ‘dead and not mourned for’ read several entries – clearly a reference to dogs that were not popular.

      The stud book records tell us that the first Lord Knutsford acquired a Labrador in 1884: Sybil, a bitch closely bred back to Netherby Boatswain. The book records a description of her being a ‘wonderful good bitch, nose, pace, endurance and marking’. She was mated to a dog from Lord Malmesbury’s kennel and thus the Munden line began. Munden Sixty, the result of a mating between Munden Sarah (a Sybil granddaughter) and the Duke of Buccleuch’s Nith (a Malmesbury Tramp grandson), was born in 1897 and by all accounts was a much-loved dog. When he died ten years later, it was Lord Knutsford himself who wrote those words in the stud book that had affected me so much: ‘To the everlasting grief of all who knew him, this splendid dog died in August 1907’. Sixty was the sire of a bitch who was to become perhaps the most famous of all the early Labradors, for it was she, Munden Single, whose impact on the field trial world would change the pattern of working gundogs for all time.

      Munden Single was born in 1899 to Munden Scottie, who had been bought from the Duke of Buccleuch’s kennel. Her breeding was therefore almost pure Buccleuch and Malmesbury. Single was destined for a success in field trials and shows that all others have sought to follow. Single had already won prizes in the show ring, including a CC^fn1 at the KC Show, when, in 1904, she was entered in the IGL^fn2 field trial at Sherbourne. As the first Labrador ever to appear at a field trial, she attracted much interest. The newspapers of the day recorded:

      Only those who were at the Meeting know how very nearly the Stake was carried off by the finest Labrador bitch ever seen on or off the bench. We refer to the Hon Mr Holland-Hibbert’s blue blooded Munden Single – up to a certain point nothing could have stopped her winning the highest honours at the trial. One of the best shots in England, a man who has handled retrievers all his life, declared to us that Single was the best game-finder and the steadiest retriever he had ever seen.

      Sadly, she didn’t win because she mouthed a bird when bringing it to hand. Lord Knutsford wrote in his record book, ‘she was too gross and I was to blame for not getting her finer. She was out of breath after a strong runner and resented its struggles’. Single had, however, done enough to ensure that Labradors were now well and truly on the map. She won a CoM (Certificate of Merit) at that trial, then went on to win others and continued to win well on the bench. When she died in 1909, her body was preserved and put on display, and it is believed still to be held in a museum vault. Lord Knutsford wrote: ‘It is a bad representation’.

      In the early days of owning Labradors, Lord Knutsford regularly showed his dogs and enjoyed some considerable success with them. In 1904 he won the first bitch CC ever awarded with Munden Single, and Munden Sentry won the only dog CC, awarded in 1905. In 1909 Munden Sooty won two CCs at Crufts and Darlington. In fact, during the first six years of ownership, when a total of 29 CCs was available, dogs owned by Lord Knutsford or bred from Munden dogs won 15 CCs.

      In 1923 Munden Scarcity was mated to Dual Ch Banchory Bolo. There were six surviving puppies; Lord Knutsford kept two: Solo, a dog, and Singer, a bitch. Another bitch was given to His Majesty the King and a dog went to Lady Howe. Lady Howe’s puppy turned out to be Ch Banchory Danilo, a dog described by Lord Knutsford as ‘winning more championships than any dog ever known – or nearly so’. Munden Solo also did well at shows; at Crufts in 1927 he was entered in ten classes, won six, was second in two and third in another. The judge wrote of him, ‘if there had been a little more of him in size, I think he would have been very near perfection.’

      Michael explained to me that, alongside his great grandfather, it had been Mrs Quintin Dick, as she then was, who had been instrumental in the formation of the Labrador Retriever Club in 1916, becoming the first Secretary and Treasurer – offices she held until her