The Noel and Henry series of five books was written over eleven years, starting with Six Ponies in 1946 and ending with Pony Club Camp in 1957.  Six Ponies, republished by Fidra for the first time since the 1970s, was Josephine Pullein-Thompson’s first solo novel.  It was published the year after It Began with Picotee,  the novel she wrote jointly with her sisters Christine and Diana.  Josephine Pullein-Thompson wrote 31 pony books (32 including It Began with Picotee), but the Noel and Henry series is her best known, and possibly the best loved.

It illustrates the shift in attitudes to riding and schooling that took place in Britain in the 1930s and 1940s.    British horsemanship in the 1920s and 1930s aimed mostly at becoming successful on the hunting field:  dressage was despised and the backward seat whilst jumping was standard.  Evelyn Radcliffe in One Day Event sums up prevailing opinion:  

But Evelyn does not, to the unknowledgeable, appear a bad rider.  Her ponies usually do what she wants them to do but it is done by strength and force of character rather than finesse.  Josephine Pullein-Thompson was well aware that Evelyn’s point of view could lead to success of a sort, but she believed it would not succeed against riding which truly considered the needs of the horse.  There was proof of this in the performance of British riders of the period against Continental opposition:  they were hopelessly outclassed.  

Although there were British works on training the horse which took a more sympathetic and constructive line (James Fillis’ Breaking and Training was published in 1902, and the Weedon Cavalry School adopted (albeit adapted) Captain Federico Caprilli’s theories on the forward seat in 1910)  these views were still not widely accepted in Britain.

Eventually the members faded away, and although the Club was wound up, Wynmalen remained a friend, and the sisters continued to ride and train according to his theories.  Major Holbrooke, the mentor and instructor of the Noel and Henry series, is perhaps an idealised version of Wynmalen, used to expound the theories of equitation the Pullein-Thompsons taught (and they taught with some success:  the South Berkshire branch of the Pony Club, which they taught, won the first Pony Club Inter-Branch competition in 1949).  Although Major Holbrooke petrifies some of the Pony Club members - “already hot, tired and cross with the members for riding so badly, [he] exploded with wrath” -, he is never less than fair, and is always willing to work to improve the members’ horsemanship.  

The real move forward came in the 1930s.  Piero Santini, a pupil of Caprilli, wrote Riding Reflections (1933) and The Forward Impulse (1938):  the two together being the first texts published in English to give an accurate reflection of Caprilli’s theories, rather than the English adaptation.  British riders were starting to realise that there was another way, and in 1938, Henry Wynmalen wrote Equitation, a book Anne Grimshaw, in her survey of British horse books describes as  “in no small way responsible for the gradual realization that dressage and careful schooling on the flat were beneficial to horses used in other fields, including hunters.”

The Pullein-Thompsons read Santini’s The Forward Impulse, and Wynmalen’s Equitation, which, they stated in Fair Girls and Grey Horses,  “instantly became our bible”.  They adopted the forward seat, and Henry Wynmalen’s theories. Wynmalen lived close to their house in Oxfordshire, and they managed to persuade him to instruct them and the Riding Club they had started; however he was a ferocious roarer, and reduced many of the Riding Club to tears.

This need to expound theories does mean that the Noel and Henry series are sometimes alarmingly technical:  much more so than the average pony book - Ruby Ferguson’s Jill series is far less so - and to the reader who has no acquaintance with horses at all some of the descriptions of what to do with your pony must seem virtually impenetrable.  Major Holbrooke’s instructions to Christopher Minton in One Day Event are a particularly good example:

However, although pony books can easily turn into didactic tomes (J M Berrisford’s A Pony in the Family being an example of the didactic unrelieved by either humour or plot) there is more than enough wit and character in the Noel and Henry books to make them eminently readable:  we can appreciate Noel’s improvement without understanding precisely how she does it.

The greatest strength of the series is its characters.  Josephine, with her sisters, ran a riding school, and so had an endless selection of ponies and pupils to act as inspiration for her stories.   The Pony Club parents are instantly recognisable:  the horribly pushy Mrs Cresswell, determined her daughter will win, and the indulgent, but canny, Mr Barrington-Brown.

Josephine Pullein-Thompson is excellent at the pithy summing up of a character, and realistic enough to recognise that there are some characters who will not change.  Richard Morrison, in Six Ponies, is an arrogant boy, misogynistic and lacking any  ability to analyse his behaviour.  The New Forest pony he is given to train, Rufus, is ignored in preference to one new fad after another, and Rufus’ appearance at the final gymkhana is wretched;  he is ungroomed and miserable.  Major Holbrooke takes Richard to task, but it makes no difference.

Richard does not change, but there are many characters in the series who do.  In a brutal passage in Six Ponies, John Manners beats Jet, the pony he is breaking.

Being discovered shocks John into realising how badly he has behaved, and he starts to learn to control his temper.

Other characters behaviour gets worse.  Christopher Minton becomes progressively more objectionable as the series progresses.  When he first appears, in Pony Club Team, he is bumptious but persuadable.  By the end of Pony Club Camp, Christopher has usurped June Cresswell’s position as The Conceited One: and  he is ultra-competitive to the point of ruthlessness.  When one of the younger children’s ponies bolts during a Sound Hunt, Christopher absolves himself of all responsibility and blithely gallops off to continue the competition.   After the camp bonfire at the end of the camp, the others discuss what a wonderful camp it has been.  Christopher can think of nothing else other than winning.

“...it was the sort [of remark] one locked in some very distant corner of one’s mind, and tried to forget.  Unfortunately, the corner was getting rather full:  school friends made such a lot of silly remarks, and one day there might not be any more room.  The last remark would break the camel’s back and a torrent of       

“He jagged her mouth viciously and hit her again and again.  Jet was terrified:  she trembled and shook all over, but John was too angry to care.  Picking up the whip he made her canter round and round on the lunge-rein, hitting her if she showed the slightest sign of slowing up.  At last, when his rage had burned itself out, John turned the exhausted, giddy and frightened pony out in the field...”

“It’s not easy to learn to control your temper, and it’s no good thinking you’re going to do it in five minutes, but if you don’t learn now it’ll be more dangerous when you grow up, because you’ll have more people and animals lin your power.”

The main characters of the series, Noel Kettering and Henry Thornton, do not undergo quite such  dramatic change as, say, John Manners.  Noel at the start of Six Ponies is dreamy and lacking confidence:  she is so engrossed in mulling over her shortcomings before she competes that we know when a show steward shouts fruitlessly for a competitor that it will be Noel he wants.  She is convinced she is an utterly hopeless rider.  At the start of the series she is:  her borrowed pony Topsy carts her out of the ring in the jumping competition.  But what Noel has is one of the qualities Josephine Pullein-Thompson most values:  humility.  Even though she takes this to such absurd lengths Major Holbrooke, the series’ adult hero, calls her Uriah, after the ever so ‘umble character in Dicken’s David Copperfield, she is always willing to learn.  She never believes she is good enough and takes endless pains to improve:  the schooling figures Major Holbrooke sends her when she takes over Romany are studied and studied and studied, and in the end, the despised Noel wins the contest for the best trained of the New Forest ponies.  As the series progresses, Noel slowly becomes more confident.  By the last in the series, Pony Club Camp, she has left school, and although still prone to attacks of the needle, is now capable of teaching the junior Pony Club members.

Henry Thornton, on the other hand, does not lack confidence, and is prone to teasing and irritating the others.  He is described by Eric in The Radney Riding Club:

Apart from being extremely funny, this is, as those of us who have been teenagers will know, an entirely accurate picture of what life is like where there is any gathering of teenage boys and girls. Collins were apparently horrified by this excursion into life as it was actually lived at Pony Club Camp, but it is one of the things that has made the series so enduring.  However much parents and publishers might wish their offsprings’ and readers’ thoughts to have been exclusively and harmlessly on ponies, the Noel and Henry romance was very much closer to the actual truth - but still so lightly drawn that there is nothing to frighten the horses or the inexperienced.  There may well not have been a kiss, and we do not know if there ever will be, but rather than have everything spelled out, Josephine Pullein-Thompson lets us fill in the gaps in our imaginations.

What makes the series perhaps unique amongst pony books of its period is the lightly drawn romance between Noel and Henry.  Unlike their American counterparts, British pony books held romance firmly at bay.  The Jill books have a few male characters, but despite the fact Jill and Anne must be at least seventeen when the series ends, and have left school, there is no suspicion at all that they have feelings for anything other than their ponies.  Compare this with the wonderfully gossipy picture Gay, David and Nicolas give of life in the Pony Club:

As the characterisation is realistic, so are the plots: in fact they could be described as unadventurous.  They are descriptions of what happens at Pony Club rallies, events and camps. No one escapes from prison, no one plots to do down the Pony Club.  The most interesting plot is that of Six Ponies:  the children in it range from the wealthy June and Susan to Noel, who can only manage to ride when she can borrow a pony, but all are placed on the same level playing field when they are given a New Forest pony to break in.  It does not matter how wealthy their parents are:  what matters is how good a rider they are and how willing to listen to advice.

Perhaps one of the reasons for the series’ popularity is its realism.  The pony book genre was, for many of its readers, fantasy, in the same way that the boarding school story was.  As few of its readers would ever go to boarding school, so most readers of pony books would never have a pony.   Thus, many of the genre (Joanna Cannan’s A Pony for Jean, Diana Pullein-Thompson’s I Wanted a Pony, Ruby Ferguson’s Jill’s Gymkhana) have as their heroines girls who found a pony and learned to ride against the odds.  After Six Ponies, in which Noel is given Sonnet as her prize for breaking in Roman, the series has none of the classic girl-acquires-pony convention.  The ponies change hands in the normal manner.  They are outgrown and sold on.  

It is this ability to portray something that is instantly recognisable that is one of Josephine Pullein-Thompson’s greatest strengths.  She does not need flurries of plot:  what she provides is enough.  The idea behind the series is simple:  a realistic portrayal of life as it went on in the Pony Club - perhaps an idealised Pony Club - one where only the best instruction was received, but one where she succeeds in capturing the people and ponies who really do go to Pony Club and in making them live.  Noel and Henry are always interesting; occasionally infuriating, often funny but always people we would like to meet, and who would do our horses nothing but good.

Sources
Cridland, Clarissa: Pony Books:  an article on the Collecting Books and Magazines website.  (Reference )
Grimshaw, Anne :  The Horse: A Bibliography of British Horse Books 1851-1976 (The Library Association, 1982)
Pullein-Thompson, Josephine: Six Ponies (Collins1946)
Pony Club Team (Collins1950)
The Radney Riding Club (Collins 1951)
One Day Event (Collins1954)
Pony Club Camp (Collins 1957)
Pullein-Thompson, Josephine, Diana and Christine : Fair Girls and Grey Horses (Allison & Busby 1996)