Pony books are often dismissed as genre fiction, but K M Peyton is proof that writing within a genre doesn’t stop you from being good.
When I re-read her Fly-by-Night and The Team, I am constantly have those magical moments when you read something and think “Yes - that is exactly how that is.” K M Peyton knew Antonia Forest, and their brilliance with characterisation is in some ways similar. Her books are consistently good. When I first read Blind Beauty, the dog went unwalked, and children had to forage for themselves.
She has been writing since she was 9, with her first book being published when she was 15 [Sabre, the Horse from the Sea]. Her training though was in painting, at Kingston School of Art and then Manchester Art School, where she met her husband, Mike, an ex prisoner-of-war. They married when she was 21, and as they both loved sailing, that is what her first books as K M Peyton were about. (I, who am anti-boat and dreadfully sea-sick, find them absolutely enthralling.) Their first pony was Cracker, an unbroken New Forest bought for their daughter Hilary. The traumas of breaking Cracker in and being a Pony Club parent found their way into Fly-by-Night and many of the subsequent books.
After the success of Flambards, Kathleen acquired an agent, Michael Motley. “... I didn’t need an agent, but he... asked me out to lunch, not to talk about writing, but about racing. Of course I fell for this, which resulted in my acquiring both an agent and a race-horse.” Wise Words, the race-horse, never won, but from her involvement with racing sprang some of her best books.
She is still writing, and has published a book a year for the last sixty years, with the most recent being Minna’s Quest. No Turning Back is due out later in 2008.
Finding the books
Most of K M Peyton’s books are easy to find, though her books written under her maiden name, Kathleen Herald, are harder, Crab the Roan being very difficult indeed, possibly the hardest. First editions of the Flambards series tend to be pricey (though they have come down in recent years). The Last Ditch (Free Rein) and Marion’s Angels can be tricky, but are not impossible.
