Tornasol – the horse who defied Siena and 384 years of history

The image above shows last year’s July Palio. I spent a week in Siena last August watching the preparations for the famous Palio horse race and have written an account which I hope to get published soon. The Palio is a stunning civic and historic phenomenon that is brutal on horses. This July, after a …

To Bridle the Horses of St Mark

Emerging from somewhere unconfirmed in classical Greece or Rome, this quadriga of horses lived in Constantinople until it was sacked by the Venetians in 1204, and they were carried off to stand guard over the Basilica of St Mark’s. Like many horses, they experienced literal upheavals in times of war, and were stolen by Napoleon …

The Princess of the Eighth Hussars

Please excuse lack of posts lately – I’ve been ill and very busy trying to wrestle my ambitions for book two into a viable proposal. I caught this lovely World-War-Two tale of a Canadian equine mascot called Princess Louise via The Brooke’s Facebook feed. Another war horse for Remembrance Sunday! Enjoy (via the Telegraph Journal): …

The Philosophical Horse

The opening scene from Hungarian director Béla Tarr’s most recent film, The Turin Horse, which, according to Wikipedia, “depicts the repetitive daily lives of the horse and its owner” – the horse that triggered Friedrich Nietzsche’s final mental breakdown, that is. I’m sure there’s a PhD out there already on the Cab Horse in the …

Save Money on Rubbish Collection – with Horses

From Anthony Dent’s Donkey: The Story of the Ass From East to West. Dent was born in 1915 in North Yorkshire, just to orient you. ‘When I was a child in a small coastal resort in the North-east the most senior employees of our local council were two old men and a donkey, who between …