Were post-Olympics Britain to vote for a head girl, it would be a fair bet that the honour would fall to Clare Balding. If it's not shocking to learn from the first volume of her endearing autobiography that she has form as a boarding school prefect, there are also little surprises embedded in the sports broadcaster's account of her early life. The daughter of a racehorse trainer, she measures out her life in ponies, boxers and lurchers, but even those who find the sporting life a distasteful mulch of dog slaver, moult and mucking out will find it hard to resist stories of the young Balding bowling into her house in filthy jodhpurs to find the Queen eating breakfast, or the Mean Girls atmosphere of boarding school pranks. Balding's love of animals is warmly expressed, a striking contrast to her rancour-free insights into a certain kind of English family, one who considered a brisk wave to be a public display of affection and who might easily forget to pick up their daughter for her first school holiday. As this biography underlines, however, she has turned out rather well.