No Celebrities Were Harmed: The Foreign Secretary and the Minister of Transport in Cadpig's Cabinet in The Starlight Barking are gentle parodies of the actual Cabinet ministers at the time. Roly Poly - a fat and accident-prone Dalmatian, one of Pongo and Missis' adult sons. He teaches George how to swim, and the two of them soon discover they have a lot in common and spend the day of magic visiting Paris together. Brainless Beauty: Missis is described as very pretty and brave but also somewhat silly, vain, selfish, and baffled by abstract concepts such as "left". Then again, many dogs are — and Pongo is very aware that while Missis may not be as clever as he is, she has better instincts. She has become a lot hardier and more down-to-earth by the end of the book. Noodle Incident: The Dearlys can afford a nice house near Regent Park because Mr Dearly, a financial wizard, had "done a very great service for the government". Later they can afford to move to the country (and buy Hill Hall) because he had done yet another "very great service" (something to do with "getting rid of the National Debt"). The story behind that must have been nearly as interesting as what his dogs got up to.

I thought the characters were simply delightful. While the book is written at a bit of a hire level for young children nowadays, we simply forget that children's books used to be written a lot different compared to those we see more often. As I said the characters were delightful and it was lovely to see much of the original cast and to meet some new faces as well which included the dog version of the British parliament. Nanny Cook and Nanny Butler invoke this. After they meet and have a good laugh over their names, they decide to train to be an actual cook and butler, since that is what the Dearlys need at the moment.The Starlight Barking is a 1967 novel that serves as the sequel to the first The Hundred and One Dalmatians.

George, the Foreign Minister - a fat, clumsy but cosmopolitan Boxer. He and Roly Poly become good friends after realizing they are much alike, and together they take a short visit to Paris. Named for Foreign Secretary George Brown. One day, while walking Pongo and Missis, Mr. and Mrs. Dearly have a chance meeting with an old schoolmate of Mrs. Dearly: Cruella de Vil, a wealthy woman so fixated on fur clothing that she married a furrier and forces him to keep his collection in their home so she can wear the pieces whenever she likes. She admires the two dogs and expresses a desire to have a Dalmatian-skin coat. Later, Missis gives birth to a litter of 15 puppies. Concerned that Missis will not be able to feed them all, the humans join in to help. As Mrs. Dearly looks for a canine wet nurse, she finds an exhausted liver-spotted Dalmatian in the middle of the road in the rain. She has the dog, who has recently given birth, treated by a vet and names her Perdita (meaning "lost"). Perdita helps to nurse the pups and becomes a member of the family. She tells Pongo about her lost love Prince and the resulting litter of puppies, which were sold by her neglectful owner. She had run away looking for those puppies.The original animated feature appeared while Disney was shifting away from fairy-tale adaptations and toward more contemporary children’s stories. 101 Dalmatians was released in early 1961, amid the likes of Swiss Family Robinson and The Parent Trap, and just a few years before Mary Poppins. The Starlight Barking was published in 1967, well after the success of the animated adaptation of the original novel, and with a considerable pop-culture cache in its corner. However, the sequel novel took the story in what can only be described as unexpected directions.

The Dearlys' home isn't described much but presumably also qualifies, as it's in the Outer Circle which was (and is) one of the most prestigious locations in London.Impoverished Patrician: Cruella De Vil. Her family's ancestral home is in disrepair, the servants working there receive no pay other than the right to live there and say the TV must be kept on at night because they don't have light bulbs. Most of her jewels are fake. When the furs her furrier husband keeps at home are destroyed by the dalmatians, it's revealed most of them aren't paid for and the De Vils must sell their ancestral home to pay their debts. Cruella also has to sell their real jewels to be able to start a new business. The Prime Minister - Cadpig's beloved owner. She idolized him when he was on TV, and he in turn was so touched by her affection (something he hadn't had for a long time) when they met that he broke down in tears and adopted her. Flipping further I found a visit to a sleeping Cruella de Vil, and a pseudo-religious Voice (Sirius Lord of the the Dog Star) entering the storyline, to warn the ‘caninecade’ that he can save them from the destructive nuclear forces about to be unleashed by humans. It would appear that the book then rapidly descends into farce as a number of ownerless dogs instead opt to seek a life at Battersea Dogs Home (a highly reputable establishment in real life). Hmm.