For the record, Herbert Hound's preferred bedtime reading is Ezra Pound. He likes the near homophone. But then, Herbert Hound is only a year old and wasn't living with us last November, so I've yet to discover if The Pisan Cantos will see him through the terrors of fireworks night.

Thankfully, the insurance company More Than has dobbed Simon Callow some cash to read Teddy & Stanley's Tall Tale, the first ever audiobook for dogs, a story that is, ahem, guaranteed to relax the most doggy through any existential crisis.

Herbert Hound doesn't look best pleased when I wake him up from his lunchtime nap, to make him sit on my lap to watch Callow reading the story on YouTube. But I explain to him that this is important, cutting-edge research and he patiently goes along with Callow's exaggerated rolling Rs; indeed for a minute or so, I could almost believe he's hooked as his eyes barely left the screen. Then, without warning, he got bored, climbed down and wandered off to the back of my study to lay his head on a copy of AP Herbert's The Secret Battle, and resumed his snooze.