After her husband was killed in an air crash after only 10 months of marriage, she moved back to England and settled in Sussex, where she started a dealing business specialising in children’s ponies. Before settling to horses, she had a very varied career, including going on stage with the Graham Moffat Company after the First World War, working as an advertising representative to the Great Eight and as advertising manager and director of Popular Flying. During the war she moved to the New Forest, where she taught riding and ran a farm. By the time the war ended, she had built up the dealing business again, and had become a recognised authority on ponies. She was also successful on the racecourse, winning several races. Glenda Spooner started Ponies Of Britain in 1953 with Miss Gladys Yule (from which show she once banned Carolline Akrill), and was involved with the International League for the Protection of Horses and the Brooke Hospital for Animals in Cairo. She said, rather firmly I feel, that she had a “great interest in animal welfare, but is not a crank.”
As far as her writing goes, 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.
Finding the books: the non-
Sources:
Dustjacket of Silk Purse
Pony Magazine Annual, Equestrian Who’s Who,1962-
Royal Crusader
Latimer House, 1948, illus Michael Lyne
Royal Crusader is an equine autobiography. Crusader does the usual equine autobiography
voyage
of travelling from good to bad owners before a happy ending. He starts life
loved and well treated, but
then after the person he is loaned to during the war dies,
he is sold, as no one knows the horse is
loaned not owned. He goes through several
owners; mostly ignorant rather than vicious, but the end
result is the same as if
they were. Eventually he is re-
The Earth Sings
Latimer House, 1950
Another I should have made notes on before I sold it. From what I can remember,
it is about
an Arab.
The Perfect Pest
Jonathan Cape, 1951, illus Charlotte Hough
Many thanks to Cherie Goninon for the picture.
The Perfect Pest is, from what I remember (I should have made notes when I read it
and before I
sold it) the youngest child of a horsy family, who goes her own way
with a vengeance, including
venturing into buying a pony at a local sale.
The Silk Purse
Cassell 1963, illus Anne Bullen
Poor Gillian. She loves her unlovely pony Tommy, but Gillian’s Mama has Ambitions
in the Show Ring,
and so Gillian must give him up and have a show pony so she can
beat her rival, Phoebe Cheetham.
The sow’s ear that is Tommy does eventually turn
into a silk purse once Gillian’s Mama realises that
the show ring is not everything.
Victoria Glencairn (A Novel)
Heinemann, 1935
This, I think, is an adult novel
For Love of Horses: The Diaries of Dorothea Brooke, ed Glenda Spooner
Old War Horse Memorial Hospital, 1960
Handbook of Showing
Museum Press, 1968
Reprinted by J A Allen, 1977
Instructions on Ponymastership
Museum Press, 1955
Revised, 1959
Pony Trekking
Museum Press, 1961, illus Joan Wanklyn
Reprinted by J A Allen, 1976
Riding
Museum Press 1964
Minority’s Colt
Cassell, 1952
Tinks Martin returned from the war to find two claims on his affections: Dinah (a
girl) and
a horse, Minority’s Colt. His rival in both cases is John Rutherford, owner
of the racing stables
where Minority’s Colt is trained.
Many thanks to Amanda Dolby for the picture.
