In the 2003 novel Yellow Dog, Xan Meo is set upon by two men in a pub who cosh him over the head: “Like the statue of a fallen tyrant, he crashed sideways into the damp paving, and lay still.” Meo is a writer and actor whose late father was a dangerous gangster; the attack is in revenge for Meo naming an old associate of his father in print. Meo survives, though the injury leaves him with an altered personality. Where he was previously a conscientious husband and father, now he is a chip off the old block.

While Meo languishes in hospital, King Henry IX – who is struggling to conceal his boredom with the job – is informed that images of his 15-year-old daughter in the bath are in circulation. And Clint Smoker, star reporter and gossip peddler at the tabloid newspaper the Morning Lark, gets an unexpected tipoff.

Yellow Dog is the Booker-nominated satirical novel by Martin Amis which, through a trio of interconnected comic narratives, explores the baser instincts of men. It is one of several Amis titles being released on audio this year; others include Money, London Fields, Night Train and The Rachel Papers.

Bill Nighy is The Yellow Dog’s narrator, and he has a ball voicing Amis’s larger-than-life protagonists. Along with Meo, Smoker and King Henry, a suitably eccentric supporting cast includes Russia, Xan’s long-suffering wife; gruff bodyguard Mal Bale; pornography tycoon Cora Susan; and mercurial football striker and tabloid darling Ainsley Car. Though some of these characters veer into caricature on the page, Nighy succeeds not only in making them believable but great fun to be around.

Available via Vintage Digital, 11hr 54min

Further listening

Love Lane
Patrick Gale, Tinder, 7hr 53min
Gale’s follow-up to his 2015 novel A Place in Winter finds his elderly protagonist Harry Cane sailing home to a radically different England and trying to reconnect with the family he abandoned. Read by the author.

Honoured
Naz Shah, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 7hr 13min
The Labour MP for Bradford West narrates her memoir recalling her traumatic childhood and teen years – she witnessed domestic violence against her mother and was forced into marriage at the age of 15 – and her eventual path into politics.

From Paddington and the BFG to The Gruffalo’s Child, My Neighbour Totoro to The Tiger Who Came to Tea, there is no shortage of stage adaptations of children’s classics filling theatres at the moment.

This week it was announced that Dog Man, the half-canine crime fighter from Dav Pilkey’s bestselling graphic novels, will make his London theatre debut at the Southbank Centre next summer.

Pilkey said the musical – adapted by Kevin Del Aguila and previously a sellout off Broadway – “surpassed my highest expectations” and left the audience, “especially me, in complete awe”. But how do writers set about reanimating cherished characters in an entirely new medium?

Del Aguila said: “When I was commissioned to adapt Dog Man my son was in fourth grade and extremely well versed in the books, so it was incredibly helpful to have a young expert at the breakfast table every morning.”

The Emmy-winning writer and actor, whose credits include stage versions of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Click, Clack, Moo and Pilkey’s Cat Kid Comic Club, said for him “it all comes down to tone”.

“If the show doesn’t feel like the books, the audience will revolt. They’re going to have quibbles no matter what – ‘that guy doesn’t look like the character in the book’ or ‘that character doesn’t speak the way I heard them in my head’ – but if you capture the sensibility of the books, I’ve found they can forgive all of that and go for the ride.”

Children, he said, felt a particular ownership of the Dog Man universe because the books felt gleefully unsupervised by adults. It was that sense of “fun anarchy” the team wanted to capture. Pikey himself, he added, was remarkably hands-off.

“He had only one stipulation when we started writing the show: Dog Man can’t talk. And if you’ve ever been told that the beloved title character of the musical you’re writing can only bark, you’ll understand the deep terror we felt. But we embraced the challenge and got inventive.”

Jessica Swale, whose Paddington: The Musical at the Savoy theatre in London premiered to rave reviews, said she began by reading and watching every book and film about the bear before “putting them all to one side and asking the hard questions – why this story, why now, and why on stage?”

Swale wanted to create a version that “celebrated theatricality” rather than simply transplanted the films to the stage. She added characters and shifted the story to embrace stagecraft – flying, magic, choreography.

A central question for Swale was what Paddington’s journey meant to modern Londoners: “This little bear arriving without a home or a family, on a lifeboat, to a city where he hopes people extend him kindness.” At the same time, she had to keep the story timeless: “The hybrid Volvo gag died an early death.”

Perhaps the greatest challenge was structural. “Traditionally, the lead character has a fatal flaw which shapes the story arc – the pompous character falls from grace, the greedy guy learns to share,” she said.

But Paddington, eternally good and kind, resists that model. So instead, Swale focused on giving the Browns and the ensemble characters their own flaw that they overcame through learning from Paddington. “Judy combats her embarrassment, Mr Brown learns to embrace risk and Mr Curry learns to embrace people (or bears) from outside his neighbourhood,” she said.

For Tom Morton-Smith, who adapted the 1988 Studio Ghibli fantasy My Neighbour Totoro for the RSC, first at the Barbican, where it won six Olivier awards, then the West End, immersion was also the key.

He already knew the film, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, “but I just watched it over and over”. Working in translation, he said, offered a degree of freedom: he could deviate from the original text while still honouring its spirit.

“What I knew was most important was not slavishly sticking to the original but finding a way to conjure the same atmospheres and feelings that the film provokes,” he said.

“I hope what we’ve achieved is a piece that feels in its bones like Totoro, not a hollow facsimile. It’s about finding the essence of what Miyazaki and Ghibli created and crafting something new – with the same rigour and attention – but using the tools of live theatre.”

In Totoro, he added, the human characters were crucial. “There are beautiful, spiritual, sometimes surreal creatures in the story, but the audience meets them through the eyes of the family. So we had to land those dynamics. If the human characters felt too cartoonish, the forest spirits wouldn’t work at all.”

Morton-Smith spoke of the “huge responsibility” of taking on such a beloved story. “If I’ve done my job properly, people won’t be aware that I’ve done anything at all.”

For smaller companies, however, the challenges often begin long before the script: budgets, rights and the legal labyrinth of what is – and isn’t – in the public domain.

Siblings Jonathan and Lucy Kaufman, whose recent adaptations include The Tales of Beatrix Potter for Spontaneous Productions in south London, say they are usually restricted to works already out of copyright.

“Specific challenges we’ve faced include thinking Beatrix Potter’s stories were in the public domain and discovering they weren’t,” Lucy Kaufman said. “Luckily, we found out in time and obtained the rights. Another was writing a climactic chase scene involving 11 characters but only five actors – an exercise in logistics.”

Adaptations now account for more than half of UK theatre box office takings. A recent British Theatre Consortium report found that venues were increasingly programming familiar titles to rebuild audiences after the Covid crisis. In 2023, adaptations made up 40.8% of all performances, up from 35.6% in 2019.

“As a writer, I’d always prefer to create original plays,” Jonathan Kaufman said. “But because well-known stories tend to sell, my challenge is to transform familiar material into something new, engaging and – above all – relevant to modern audiences.”

Dog Man, the half-canine crimefighter dreamed up by Captain Underpants author and illustrator Dav Pilkey, is to make his London theatre debut.

A musical based on the bestselling comic books will receive its European premiere at the Southbank Centre next summer. First seen off-Broadway in 2019, it is framed as a show created by best friends George and Harold, the duo Pilkey presents as the comic’s creators. Drawing on instalments from the series including A Tale of Two Kitties and Lord of the Fleas, the plot brings together familiar characters from the irreverent Dog Man world such as the dastardly cat Petey, his clone Lil’ Petey, the robot 80-HD and the cyborg fish Flippy.

The musical, aimed at over-fives, had several sell-out seasons off-Broadway and also toured the US. Its arrival in London will mark 10 years since the publication of the first Dog Man book. The character of a badly injured policeman who emerges from surgery newly sporting the head of his trusty mutt had previously appeared in Captain Underpants.

Reviewing the 2019 production of the musical at the Lucille Lortel theatre, the New York Times’ Laurel Graeber wrote: “Breezily directed and choreographed by Jen Wineman, the show benefits from Tim Mackabee’s designs for the set and some small puppets, which preserve the novel’s comic-book feel.” Graeber praised Brad Alexander’s “high-energy score” and how lyricist Kevin Del Aguila imaginatively “preserved the novel’s wry parody of Charles Dickens”.

The Dog Man series has sold more than 70m copies worldwide and has been translated into around 50 languages. A movie, Dog Man, and a video game, Dog Man: Mission Impawsible, were both released in the last year. The 14th book in the series, Big Jim Believes, was published in November.

Pilkey said that the musical “surpassed my highest expectations” and left the audience “especially me, in complete awe”. He described the show as “the perfect mash-up of memorable music, humour and love”. Dog Man: The Musical is at the Southbank Centre, London, from 30 July to 16 August.

Evoking the classic Disney tearjerker Old Yeller, in which a family is forced to put down their beloved dog, the US film-maker and campaigner Abigail Disney exhorted voters to oppose the Republican party of Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor whose story of killing Cricket, a 14-month-old dog, shocked the world and seemingly dynamited her hopes of being Donald Trump’s running mate.

“My great-uncle Walt Disney knew the magic place animals have in the hearts of families everywhere,” Disney wrote in an email released by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) and obtained exclusively by the Guardian.

“When he released Old Yeller, the heart wrenching story stayed with people because no one takes the killing of a family pet lightly.

“At least that’s what I thought until I read about potential Trump VP Kristi Noem shooting her family’s puppy – a story that has shocked so many of us.”

Noem describes the day she killed Cricket (and an unnamed goat) in No Going Back, a campaign memoir published this week but first reported late last month by the Guardian.

Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer, met her fate in a gravel pit because Noem deemed her “untrainable” after she disrupted a pheasant hunt and killed a neighbour’s chickens. The goat, which had not been castrated, was deemed too aggressive and smelly and a danger to Noem’s children. By the governor’s own admission, it took two blasts with a shotgun to finish the goat off.

Noem has repeatedly defended her story as indicative of her willingness to do unpleasant but necessary things in life as well as politics. Nonetheless, she has reportedly slipped way down Donald Trump’s list of possible vice-presidential picks, should the presumptive Republican nominee avoid prison on any of 88 criminal charges and should he beat Biden in November.

Two weeks after the Guardian report, shock and revulsion over Noem’s story continues to ring throughout the US. This week, amid a string of uncomfortable interviews even on usually friendly rightwing networks, also questioning an untrue claim to have met the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, the governor cut short a promotional tour for her book.

In her email in support of the PCCC, Disney said: “Walt Disney also understood story telling. Together, we must make sure all voters see how this sad Kristi Noem episode is part of the larger story of the 2024 election: America could vote into the White House extremists that glorify cruelty and lack basic empathy and compassion.”

Asking readers to post pictures of beloved pets and the hashtag #UnleashTheVote, Disney also promoted a petition against “Trump and extreme Republicans who lack the character to lead our nation”.

Old Yeller, which the Guardian called “one of the best and most poignant boy-and-his dog movies”, was released in 1957. It tells the story of a family in Texas in 1869 that adopts a large yellow dog.

Disney said: “In Old Yeller, the family comes to see the lovable stray dog as an indispensable member of the family. The film’s climactic moment is a heartbreaking one, when the father has no choice but to shoot Old Yeller when the dog contracts rabies because of the inevitable threat to their lives – and, out of compassion, to end the suffering the dog would have to endure.

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“Noem shot her family’s 14-month-old puppy after a hunting trip, in her own account, because she was too hard to teach. ‘I hated that dog,’ she wrote, framing the killing of a puppy as an example of strength.

“Kristi Noem is not strong. Like Trump, she is cruel and selfish.”

Listing positions taken by Trump and supporters like Noem, Disney said: “If Kristi Noem was actually strong, she would stand up to the January 6 insurrectionists instead of celebrating them. Or she would make billionaires pay their fair share of taxes instead of lining up for their campaign donations.

“If she had real courage, she might even criticise the supreme court for abolishing abortion rights or making it easier to flood our streets and schools with guns.

“True strength is not demonstrated through harshness, brutality, or callous indifference, but through steadfast kindness and compassion. Our pets teach most of us this lesson every day through their loyalty and unconditional love.

“Let’s make sure Americans demand leaders who do the same when it comes time to vote.”

Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor and Republican vice-presidential hopeful, on Sunday again defended killing a family dog and goat on her farm, two days after the Guardian revealed how she describes those actions in a forthcoming book.

“I can understand why some people are upset about a 20-year-old story of Cricket, one of the working dogs at our ranch, in my upcoming book – No Going Back,” Noem wrote on Twitter/X.

“The book is filled with many honest stories of my life, good and bad days, challenges, painful decisions, and lessons learned.”

Noem’s book comes out in May. The Guardian obtained a copy and reported how Noem recounts the story of Cricket – a 14-month-old, wire-haired pointer – ruining a pheasant hunt and killing a neighbour’s chickens.

“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket tried to bite her, proving herself “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.

“At that moment,” says Noem, “I realised I had to put her down.”

The governor describes taking Cricket to a gravel pit and killing her – then deciding to mete out the same fate to the unruly, uncastrated goat. The second killing took two shots, says Noem, adding that when it was all over her daughter Kennedy came home from school and asked: “Hey, where’s Cricket?”

Kennedy Noem is now 27 years old, making her, by the governor’s statement, just seven at the time of her mother’s decision to shoot Cricket and the unnamed goat.

Amid widespread disbelief that a contender to be selected as Donald Trump’s running mate would commit such a tale to paper, many observers deemed Noem’s hopes of national office as dead as Cricket and the unnamed goat.

Noem defended her story on Friday, saying it demonstrated the harsh realities of rural life that only recently saw her family put down three horses too.

But animal rights groups condemned Noem.

“There’s no rational and plausible excuse for Noem shooting a juvenile dog for normal puppy-like behavior,” said a statement from Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy. “If she is unable to handle an animal, ask a family member or a neighbor to help. If training and socializing the dog doesn’t work, then give the dog to a more caring family or to a shelter for adoption.

“Raising and caring for a dog takes patience and kindness. Tens of millions of Americans who know and love dogs have to wonder about a person who expresses hatred for a young female dog and kills her.”

Meanwhile, one activist wrote to police Friday asking them “to ascertain whether all the legal and ethical guidelines were followed, given the high-profile nature of the incident”.

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“Governor Kristi Noem … has publicly stated that she shot and killed her own dog,” said the missive that Chaz Stevens, the chief executive officer of ESADoggy, sent to police. “This incident raises significant concerns about animal welfare and the circumstances that led to such a drastic action.

In her Sunday post, Noem said: “What I learned from my years of public service, especially leading South Dakota through Covid, is people are looking for leaders who are authentic, willing to learn from the past, and don’t shy away from tough challenges.

“My hope is anyone reading this book will have an understanding that I always work to make the best decisions I can for the people in my life.

“The fact is, South Dakota law states that dogs who attack and kill livestock can be put down. Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them, I decided what I did.”

According to the South Dakota legislature, livestock “means cattle, sheep, horses, mules, swine, goats, and buffalo”.

A spokesperson for Noem did not immediately respond to a request for comment about how chickens are not mentioned in the state’s definition of livestock.

The governor’s post Sunday did not mention her decision to kill the goat.

Ramon Antonio Vargas contributed reporting

Conservative pundits have condemned the South Dakota governor and possible Trump running mate Kristi Noem, amid widespread horror over her admission in a new book that she killed both an “untrainable” dog and an unruly goat during a single day in hunting season.

Alyssa Farah Griffin, a Trump White House staffer turned critic, said: “I’m a dog lover and I am honestly horrified by the Kristi Noem excerpt. I wish I hadn’t even read it. A 14-month-old dog is still a puppy and can be trained. A large part of bad behaviour in dogs is not having proper training from humans.

“Dogs are a gift from God. They’re a reflection of his unconditional love. Anyone who would needlessly hurt an animal because they are inconvenient needs help.”

The Guardian revealed Noem’s story, which is contained in a book out next month. In No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, Noem describes her frustrations with Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehair pointer who Noem says ruined a pheasant hunt and killed a neighbouring family’s chickens.

“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, saying Cricket was “untrainable … dangerous” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.

“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”

Noem describes taking Cricket to a gravel pit on her farm and shooting her. Remarkably, Noem then describes how she also chose to kill an unruly, unnamed, un-castrated goat, first botching the job then finishing the animal off with a third shotgun shell.

The news roiled the race to be named running mate to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, of whom Noem is an ardent supporter.

Sarah Matthews, another Trump aide turned opponent, said: “When I saw tweets about Kristi Noem murdering her puppy, I thought to myself, ‘Damn, one of the other VP contenders’ teams found some oppo,’ until I realized SHE wrote about it in HER book.

“I’m not sure why anyone would brag about this unless they’re sick and twisted.”

Rachel Bade, senior Washington correspondent for Politico, said: “Not sure who advised Kristi Noem that it was a good idea to boast about killing her 14-month-old puppy but I’m willing to bet this would be a big problem for her if she [was] chosen for VP. Makes [2012 presidential nominee Mitt] Romney’s dog-on-the-car-roof story look quaint.”

Meghan McCain, a pundit whose father, the late Arizona Republican senator John McCain, made one of the most famous running mate selections in history when he chose the extremist Sarah Palin in 2008, wrote on X: “You can recover from a lot of things in politics, change the narrative etc. But not from killing a dog.

“All I will distinctly think about Kristi Noem now is that she murdered a puppy who was ‘acting up’ – which is obviously cruel and insane. Good luck with that VP pick[,] lady.”

Noem responded by doubling down.

“We love animals,” she said, “but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm. Sadly, we just had to put down three horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years.”

The governor also promised “more real, honest and politically incorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping”.

But in political and media circles, most gasps were of horror – alongside mourning for Cricket and the unnamed goat.

Joe Biden’s re-election campaign seized on the story, tweeting pictures of the president and his vice-president, Kamala Harris, happily interacting with dogs. The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, called Noem’s words “truly disturbing and horrifying”.

“Our message is plain and simple,” the DNC said. “If you want elected officials who don’t brag about brutally killing their pets as part of their self-promotional book tour, then listen to our owners – and vote Democrat.”

Dan Lussen, a hunting dog trainer, told Rolling Stone a 14-month-old dog was a “baby that doesn’t know any better”, adding that unruly dogs were the result of a lack of guidance, training or discipline by the owner.

The pressure group Peta – People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals – said: “Most Americans love their dogs, and we suspect that they will consider Governor Noem a psychotic loony for letting this rambunctious puppy loose on chickens and then punishing her by deciding to personally blow her brains out rather than attempting to train her or find a more responsible guardian who would provide her with a proper home.

“Governor Noem obviously fails to understand the vital political concepts of education, cooperation, compromise and compassion.”

Celebrity dog lovers joined the condemnation.

The actor Mark Hamill, best known as Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars movies, posted a picture with his two dogs and said: “Despising animal cruelty should be bipartisan.”

Martina Navratilova, one of the greatest tennis players of all time, addressed Noem directly: “You are so full of shit it’s not even funny. You just couldn’t be bothered to train that puppy. And if [s]he truly couldn’t be a birddog, I am quite sure [s]he would have been a great pet for a family that didn’t need to shoot birds to give [her] something to do. #psychopath.”

Back in politics, Rick Wilson, a former Republican operative, called Noem “deliberately cruel” and “trash”. Later, the Lincoln Project, the anti-Trump group Wilson co-founded, released a short video ad.

Over shots of dogs looking lovable but acting rambunctiously, a solemn voice said: “Dog owners know our furry friends can be a lot to keep up with.

“But when those tough moments come, you have options. Shooting your dog in the face should not be one of them. And if you do happen to shoot your dog in the face, please, don’t write about it in your autobiography.

“This has been a public service announcement directed at any Republican who may be considering murdering their dog.”