Irreverent eye

The wife of a veteran British diplomat combines antic sketches of dogs with sayings from Confucius and Lao Tzu in her latest book. Mike Peters reports.

Her husband is a longtime British diplomat in Her Majesty's Foreign Service. She's in her mid-50s with a passport that sings of embassy postings, starting with China in the early 1980s. If the picture in your mind is a stodgy matron with a stiff upper lip, you haven't met Cherry Denman.

An illustrator with a quick wit and quicker laugh, she delights in drawing a quick moustache on a sketch of her queen, and she's fascinated by the sudden rush of middle-class Chinese to pamper pets, particularly dogs.