PBOTD 2nd September: Shirley Faulkner-Horne - Parachute Silk and Mexican Saddle

-
Shirley Faulkner-Horne started writing early, publishing her first book in 1936, when she was 15. A non-fiction title, Riding for Children was reviewed in Riding magazine, who described it as “full of instruction, entirely accurate, and. .. written with a simplicity of style.” 

 
One of her wartime books, Parachute Silk (1942) is the first of the series featuring Ian and Veronica Paisley. It's a straightforward spy-chasing adventure. Their dog Rufus finds a piece of parachute silk: Ian and Veronica are convinced this means a German spy has landed, but no one will believe them. The aftermath of war gets a mention at the very beginning of Mexican Saddle (1946):
“The war was over, but it would be a long time before things returned to normal again. People were quarrelling and shots still echoed across the Continent. It seemed as if the world would never settle down.”
Ian, the hero, plans to enter the RAF, but that is all the mention the war gets: again Ian and Veronica and their friends sail off on a quest to find out just why the mysterious Mr Dickson is so keen on acquiring the Mexican saddle Ian bought at a jumble sale. It is quite possible that had the author been allowed, she would have written more, but publishers were not always keen on the War being mentioned in children’s books. Lorna Hill’s publishers rejected her Northern Lights in the late 1940s. It featured World War II, which they felt the public would not want to read about.



Shirley Faulkner-Horne's husband was a pilot, who flew in the Battle of Britain, and this probably provided a far more pertinent, and personal, reason for allowing the war to intrude only a little on her plots.

~  0  ~

More on Shirley Faulkner-Horne

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