Glenda Spooner started Ponies Of Britain (from which show she once banned Carolline Akrill), and was involved with the International League for the Protection of Horses. She is best known for her showing books, which are very easy to find, unlike her fiction, which is generally very difficult indeed. The Silk Purse is available as a short story in Purnell’s Golden Treasury of Horses, which is where I first came across it. I was utterly delighted when I realised there was a whole book. I love its depiction of showing (for which of course Glenda Spooner had all the material she could have asked for), particularly its depiction of the desperate showing mother and the reluctant daughter. The book does a rather surprising whoop off into fantasy land halfway through, but it’s none the worse for that. The Earth Sings features Arabians; The Perfect Pest is the aptly titled story of a child who, if she was mine, would have driven me to drink. Fortunately the Pest’s parents treat her with much more equanimity than I would have managed.
The Perfect Pest
Jonathan Cape, 1951, illus Charlotte Hough
Many thanks to Cherie Goninon for the picture.
