Authors Electric

This month, we take a look at a classic novel you've probably heard of even if you aren't a horsey person and don't normally read books with ponies on the front cover!  Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. Being pony mad, and with Black Beauty  accepted as a children's story at the time, I read this book when I was about 10 years old. I can remember enjoying it as a story written from a horse's viewpoint, although not much else of the plot stayed with me over the years. I don't even remember what the cover looked like, only that it was a library book like most of my reading back then, so it was probably a hardcover edition. Weirdly, I've never actually owned a copy of this book, so I picked up a paperback edition from a secondhand bookshop in Hay-on-Wye to re-read with adult eyes for this review. First published in 1877, the story follows Black Beauty's life from a foal in the meadow with his mother, through good times and bad, as he travels from Hampshire to B...

Rusty, newly arrived Rusty arrived two weeks ago and trotted straight into my heart. Not that I flatter myself that my feelings are of any more than pragmatic interest to him. He seems a self-possessed little pony, not nervy, not needy, sizing up his new situation and making the best of it. A sensible chap.       My own riding days are over but we have two stables and some sheds which enable my daughter Georgeanna to base her two retired racehorses here. Rusty’s job is as a minder for Backbord, a hurdles winner at Cheltenham in his day (not with us, I hasten to add). Georgeanna was his work rider, led him up at the races and bought him for a nominal sum when his career came to an end. He’s now 23, elderly for a thoroughbred, and has recently suffered the loss of an eye.       Backbord is so devoted to his stable companion Bo (22)  that it’s become impossible to separate them. Theirs is an intense relationship with a competitive edge. They can...