When I was learning to ride horses, manuals were essentially worked-over cavalry manuals: horses were to obey, and the rider’s job was to know how to give orders. That changed in the 1960s, when trainers who had never been in the cavalry began to pay attention to horse behaviour. For my first middle-grade series, The Horses of Oak Valley Ranch, I wanted to focus on that, so I set it in the mid-60s and introduced trainers with new techniques.
My new book, Riding Lessons, is about Ellen, a girl who loves horses but has to beg to be taught how to ride. She is what was once known as “contrary”: she wants to have her way and knows how to get it (sometimes by subterfuge). I wasn’t her as a child, but I would have loved to be her friend.
1. The Manual of Horsemanship by the British Horse Society and Pony Club
When I was a gawky and ignorant 11-year-old, a friend got me to join the Pony Club and introduced me to this book – and the words “headstall”, “loose box”, “gymkhana” and “day rug” in the process. I learned that horses teach their riders to pay attention, be aware of their bodies, contain themselves, follow procedure and watch others. Joan Wanklyn’s graceful illustrations gave the horses intentions and personality.
2. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
A not-children’s book that has become a children’s book, this story of an abused horse contemplating other abused horses he has known was written by a woman who received only £40 for her efforts and died shortly after it was published.
3. National Velvet by Enid Bagnold
When I first read National Velvet, I read it for the horse; now I read it for the portrayal of Velvet’s eccentric family. Of course, the arc of Velvet’s Grand National win is utterly unbelievable, but her siblings, her parents and Mi are people of their time and place, making do with their muddy and odd circumstances. I love how frank Bagnold is, but also how she folds the unbelievable parts, such as Velvet’s run, into vivid, believable details of weather, chaos and chance events.
4. The Kellys and the O’Kellys by Anthony Trollope
Trollope’s second novel is insightful about Ireland, women, money and family friction, but my favourite bits take place on the turf. Dot Blake is one of the great horse-racing characters in fiction, not because he’s so colourful but because he’s so smart. He gives good advice, about racing and marriage, and he makes use of many intemperate men while never being one himself. Trollope knew his horses and his hunting: there’s a neatly choreographed hunting scene in his novel Orley Farm, and in The Duke’s Children, Lord Silverbridge is swindled out of what would now be £7m by a racecourse scoundrel.
5. Carrot for a Chestnut by Dick Francis
I’ve read and enjoyed many of Francis’s novels, but this short story, originally published in Sports Illustrated, is his most brilliant work. It’s about two brothers, sons of a trainer. One brother is favoured over the other and gets to ride the better horses; the other decides to poison his brother’s mount. I’ll stop there. The plot twist is great, and the psychological insights are eye-popping.
6. Saratoga Fleshpot by Stephen Dobyns
Dobyns is best known for his poetry, but in the 1990s he wrote a series of humorous detective novels set in Saratoga, New York. I love them all, but this one – about the Saratoga summer horse sales, a two-year-old that bites the buttocks of anyone standing near him and the amusingly named Victor Plotz – is hard to beat. Dobyns is a master of language and seems to know horse racing inside and out.
7. The Horse, the Wheel and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World by David W Anthony
Can one of my favourites be a book I’ve not finished, but one that I dip into often and with pleasure? It combines three of my greatest interests: horses, travel and philology. When Anthony writes about Mycenae, I remember staring at the stone block at the city gate where chariot wheels left grooves in the paving stones. When he talks about dead languages, I’m reminded of reading Bede in my Old English class. When he writes about taming horses, I see a broad, rolling steppe I’ve never visited. I love history books, and this is one of my favourites.
8. Slow Horses, Fast Women by Damon Runyon
The collection is out of print and hard to find. The main Runyon collection in print, Guys and Dolls and Other Writings, doesn’t contain one particular story I love: All Horse Players Die Broke. However, Runyon’s style is always distinct, amusing and insightful. A woman is a “Judy”, a gun is a “Betsy” and a head is a “pimple”, as in: “Although it is only the night before that I am standing in the same spot wondering where I can borrow a Betsy with which to shoot myself smack-dab through the pimple.”
9. Talking With Horses by Henry Blake
I’ve read books by many “horse whisperers”. Henry Blake was born in the 1920s, grew up with horses and got into the business of making useful animals out of rogues. Blake had a natural touch – one day, he took five unbroken horses fox hunting because the hunts kept crossing his property and he saw it as an opportunity to jump on them one by one, to give them something to do. Of all the advocates of humane training methods, Blake is the funniest.
10. Deborah Butterfield by Robert Gordon
I wrote an introduction to this book, but the book is only a gateway to photographs of the amazing artworks by Deborah Butterfield, a sculptor and dressage rider. Many of her cast bronze horses begin as branches and pieces of wood, which she forms into horses (up to seven feet at the withers), then turns into bronze using the lost wax casting method. How can these animals look so energetic and alive? I have no idea, but they do.
• Riding Lessons by Jane Smiley is published by Scholastic Children’s Books for £5.99. It is available from the Guardian Bookshop for £5.09.
