I’ve just published a chapter called “Inventing the Wild Horse: the Manmade History of the Takhi and Tarpan from 1828–2018” in Horse Breeds and Human Society: Purity, Identity and the Making of the Modern Horse, edited by Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld (Routledge, 2020). I went overboard writing this and outstripped my word count so …
Category Archives: 1300s
The Emininently Recyclable Horse
In The Age of the Horse I gave readers some idea of the ingenuity humans used to recycle the bodies of horses used in the nineteenth century west. Of course, this inventiveness was not restricted to the Victorian era nor to the more rapidly industrialised nations – and we’re still finding new uses for …
A (Not So) Short History of Women Riding Astride
I enjoyed talking about the history of sidesaddle on Countryfile – it was my first experience of TV and everyone was incredibly friendly and easygoing. We did a few takes of different parts of the interview and it was hard to know whether to embellish what I’d said each time or to say the same …
Continue reading “A (Not So) Short History of Women Riding Astride”
If Wishes Were Horses: Ladies
The Taymouth Hours: the ladies set out on horseback, and begin to gallop and hunt a deer. And catch it. This post relates to a chapter of the book If Wishes Were Horses: A Memoir of an Equine Obsession. If you have any questions to ask about the content, please fire away in the comments. …
Polo Week: The Art of War
“May the heads of your enemies be your polo balls.” The Persian poet Hafiz (1320–1389) wishes Tamerlane the Great well. Quoted in “From Iran to All of Asia: The Origin and Diffusion of Polo,” by H E Chehabi and Allen Guttmann in Journal of the History of Sport, vol. 19, June–September 2002.