About me
Hello, and thank you for reading my blog, which gives me the chance to expand on the things that
interest me, like horses. And other things, every now and then, but principally horses.
This blog is connected to one of the things that I do for a living: writing. I've written Heroines on Horseback (2013), a gallop through the pony book in children's fiction, and have written the world's largest website on equine literature. Heroines on Horseback will be appearing as an e-book later this year (2018).
And why horses? I've always liked them. I can't remember not. My earliest horse memory is being bitten on the arm by a piebald who lived in the field at the end of our garden. It did not put me off.
My riding is of the pedestrian, everyday variety. I am more concerned with staying on than achieving heights of equestrian brilliance. Sadly, I don't always achieve that. I have fallen off a lot of horses in my time, but the silliest was off a pony who had come to a complete stop. Having stayed on until then, I slowly toppled off sideways into a ploughed field.
I'm fascinated by the world of the horse as it is and as it was: not so long ago, in my parents' childhoods, horses were everyday creatures. My godfather's first job at the age of fourteen was looking after the farm horses. It's so tantalising, that sense of a teeming mass of equine life just out of sight: the stables you catch glimpses of behind town centre shops, the horse troughs now filled with flowers, and the ploughs that have become garden ornaments.
Much of what I write is about that world.
And the pony book is similar, in that much of my study of it involves looking back into what enchanted different generations of children, and what still pulls them back, decades later, into the world of Jill, of Jackie and Jean, and of Thowra, Black Boy and Misty.
If you'd like me to write on the world of the horse for you, get in touch.
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| © Hannah Hall Photography |
This blog is connected to one of the things that I do for a living: writing. I've written Heroines on Horseback (2013), a gallop through the pony book in children's fiction, and have written the world's largest website on equine literature. Heroines on Horseback will be appearing as an e-book later this year (2018).
And why horses? I've always liked them. I can't remember not. My earliest horse memory is being bitten on the arm by a piebald who lived in the field at the end of our garden. It did not put me off.
My riding is of the pedestrian, everyday variety. I am more concerned with staying on than achieving heights of equestrian brilliance. Sadly, I don't always achieve that. I have fallen off a lot of horses in my time, but the silliest was off a pony who had come to a complete stop. Having stayed on until then, I slowly toppled off sideways into a ploughed field.
I'm fascinated by the world of the horse as it is and as it was: not so long ago, in my parents' childhoods, horses were everyday creatures. My godfather's first job at the age of fourteen was looking after the farm horses. It's so tantalising, that sense of a teeming mass of equine life just out of sight: the stables you catch glimpses of behind town centre shops, the horse troughs now filled with flowers, and the ploughs that have become garden ornaments.
Much of what I write is about that world.
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| My great aunt, great uncle, and a farm horse on Uncle John's farm |
If you'd like me to write on the world of the horse for you, get in touch.
