Review: K M Peyton – When the Sirens Sounded

-
I mentioned this book in my round up of up and coming horse books, and that was as far as I got. That was my mistake, as this (mostly true) account of a wartime childhood is a fine read. The book does have a slightly odd layout at times, with single words on a page where the line ought to run on, but that’s a minor matter. It's a must read for anyone who wants to know about the early life of the author creator of Fly-by-Night, Flambards and Patrick Pennington.


 When the Sirens Sounded is a fascinating account of a girl growing up during wartime, and for whom it is therefore normal to be perpetually cold, to hear air raid sirens on a daily basis, and to experience the petrifying wait for the cut out of the doodlebugs.

K M Peyton was at school during the war, and the population of the school fluctuated with the fortunes of the war. As things went well, girls came back, and as the bombings increased, they were sent out of London. K M Peyton and her family remained where they were throughout. Kathleen had two passions in her life: horses, and as time went, on, boys. The boys in the book, she tells us later, were fictional, but the ponies were real. The things the pony obsession makes you do are all there: the endless imaginary ponies, the extended trots down the footpath, and the friendships whose only basis is the horse.

The author’s neat and occasionally acerbic observation of character are well to the fore. I felt for poor blue Biddy, asthmatic in a pre-inhaler age, and fumed too as Annabel, beautiful, rich, gifted and utterly entitled swept in and batted her eyelashes at people’s boyfriends simply because she could. Being K M Peyton, the horses and ponies are of course beautifully done. The end of the book, where Kathleen rides off with the enigmatic, kind Con, may well be the last thing K M Peyton ever publishes. She’s said she’s giving up writing. It’s a wonderful piece, and although written after they were created, it reads as if she’s riding out into that passionate world she conjured up, with Christina, Ruth, Patrick, and Fly and Swallows all before her.

“Ahead of me the chestnut pony’s tail swirled out in sudden movement. My pony’s stride lengthened, smooth, so smooth, the perfect pony that I had dreamed of all my life, the warm shoulders sliding rhythmically before me and the soft caress of his hooves over the ancient turf....
Above me a great canopy of dusk-violet sky where the first stars were faint, not yet competing with the spectacle below. What more could I want? Could I ever want? On top of the whole world, the lights beckoning and the stride lengthening, faster and faster, chasing the wonderful boy across the arc of the downs, into the night.”

 K M Peyton was awarded a richly deserved MBE in the 2014 New Year’s Honours.

~  0  ~

Review:  K M Peyton – When the Sirens Sounded – A Wartime Childhood
Artists’ and Photographers’ Press Ltd, 2012. £12.99

K M Peyton’s website

K M Peyton on my website - with an illustrated bibliography 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rollkur and the blue tongue

-
I've been meaning to write about this all week, but reading the exclusive in Horse and Hound about the controversy tipped me over the edge. For my non-horsy readers, rollkur is a training/warming up technique used by some dressage riders. It basically involves riding the horse with its jaw pulled in virtually to its chest, in order to increase suppleness. Patrik Kittel , a Swedish competitor in Odense was videoed riding his horse in this way. If you watch the video , you'll see the horse's tongue hanging out - blue. It takes a while before the rider notices this. When he does, he stops, puts the horse's tongue back in, and carries on. There are two things which bother me about this. Firstly, I am fully aware large sections of the dressage world, and some of its brighest stars, consider rollkur perfectly ok, but the FEI guidelines state this practice should only be for short periods, allowing the horse to rest. Patrick Kittel apparently rode the horse for two hou...
Read more

Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes

-
Image
My friend Louise sent me this picture today. It's from a children's book with the rather wince-making title For The Wee Ones. I thought, when I read that (because I read the message before I looked at the picture) that the picture was going to be a typical winsome production from the school of artists who think (or who are paid to think) that the child is a thing sent from God and a blissful thing. They had obviously never met a child, and certainly not mine. I should have known Louise better. The artist responsible for Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes slipped this one past the editors. Just look at the poor, broken Mother Rabbit. She knows she has not the faintest chance of being listened to, and poor thing, she is stooped in the way of a mother to whom this is just the lastest in a long line of horror; with nothing good to come. And Archibald is obviously the spawn of the Devil. Just look at those eyes. He'll have the bed after he's finished the bedclothes...
Read more

Dick Sparrow - 40 Horse Hitch, and Neil Dimmock's 46 Percherons

-
Image
Here's a clip of Dick Sparrow driving 40 horses. It's an amazing sight, particularly when the shot changes to show the team from the rear and you get the great incongruity of modern American corporate architecture as a background to the wagon and horses. I love the anticipation in the video: the sense of something amazing being just round the corner is palpable. Thanks to Christina Wilsdon for telling me about this world record 46 Percheron hitch (alas just stills) but you get the idea.
Read more