I often wonder how many of the ponies who appear in pony books were based on real ponies.  Not all, by any means, but Gillian Baxter's books are full of ponies she has known or owned.  When I talked to her, I was struck by just how many of her equine characters were based on her own horses and ponies.

But it wasn't always so.   “I always wrote,” she said, “but I started by writing stories about guinea pigs and mice.  I had a lot of small animals - at one point I actually had over 100 mice! I was always writing when I was a child, and even more so when I got my first typewriter.”  Her mother also wrote, and had some children's stories published in ladies' papers, so like the Pullein-Thompsons, Gillian had maternal encouragement. Her parents were thrilled when she had her first book, Horses and Heather, published when she was 15.

None of her family were horsey, but her grandmother used to tell Gillian stories of  horses.  “One used to pull my great-grandfather's cobbler's cart around big houses in the Midlands, where he would fit shoes for everyone; from the maid to the owners of the house.  The horse was called Bob, and he was terrified of steam-engines and                   

Gillian started riding in London, where the family then lived.  She went to a Convent School  and then Camden School for Girls in London  - not to a boarding school, though the school Roberta and Ellen go to in Jump for the Stars exists.  It was based on one a friend of Gillian's went to, out of which she sneaked on regular occasions.  I asked Gillian if she had ever done this but she laughed and said she was rather more law-abiding!

Gillian started riding when she was 12 at the De Vere Stables (which appear in Tan and Tarmac – long gone now, they were used by the Civil Service Riding Club until they were re-developed), and so most of her early riding took place in about as urban an environment as you can think of.  Once she started riding she rode many of the De Vere Stables' own ponies, but also kept her first pony, Tommy there.  Tommy, a 14.2 bay cob she kept at part-livery was “lazy but nice-looking.”  I asked if he'd ever found a spark.  “No!  He never changed!”

Riding in London is of course radically different to riding in the country.   I never had good brakes as a child, and when I used to see horses in Hyde Park I didn't see myself trotting in perfect control along Rotten Row: I had horrible visions of careering out of control in the Park, scattering poodles and polite children.  Gillian is obviously an infinitely better rider than me, as this was not a problem for her, though Amber, one of her favourite ponies, did apparently “career around the park, but she wasn't as bad as one pony  I knew who got loose, jumped the railings into Park Lane and was eventually banned from the Park by the police.”  This was a fate which the characters in Tan and Tarmac thankfully didn't meet.  The ponies in Tan and Tarmac were nearly all real, as were some of the characters: in fact Gillian has just been to the 70th birthday part of the real life Tessa!   The stables in the book were a mixture of two:  the De Vere stables, who didn't take part in any  

Tan and Tarmac is quite possibly the only pony book centred around riding in London, without a later escape to the more horse-friendly countryside.  Several of Gillian's books are unique:  I cannot think of another book which combines ponies and racing cars (Ribbons and Rings) and she was the first to write a pony book about dressage (The Stables at Hampton).  Gillian's earlier pony books are also unusual because she focussed on teenagers and girls in their early twenties.  I asked why she wrote about teenagers when so many authors wrote about younger children.  “I wrote about the age I knew and stayed with them as they grew up.  I think it's important to go with your characters.”  She was lucky with her publishers:  not all were happy for their authors' characters to age.  After the Noel and Henry series, Collins forbade Josphine Pullein-Thompson from writing another series where the characters aged.  Gillian's publishers Evans were already publishing Lorna Hill's Sadler's Wells ballet series, in which the heroine Veronica not only ages, she has a child, so presumably didn't have Collins' objections.  

By the time Gillian and her family moved to Surrey -  Gatton Park near Reigate - she had well and truly left school.  “I didn't,” she said, “go to school as much as I should have and I left as soon as possible.”  She had two horses in Surrey:  “Goldie, who was chestnut:  he was traffic-shy, and Minty, who was a grey Welsh Cob.  I did shows with them, and hunted and hacked.  I wasn't writing full time- I worked for Country Life as a typist and drove my  father (an economist) around the country.”  The Bracken Stables series, written at this time, sees Roberta from school girl to professional rider who is about to marry Guy.  And there the series ends....