Disappearing Przewalskis, a 1943 train journey from the Eastern Front to Berlin, and a “Fascist leader” called Baumgarten: my unfinished wild-horse chase

One day when I hadn’t yet started working on The Age of the Horse, I was at a National Trust property in England, vaguely on the trail of a woman who fascinated me and whose story I had researched but was unsure how to tell. I was trying to find a work-around for the limitations …

Introducing Children to Horse Racing

Hoppegarten is a beautiful old race course just outside Berlin, somewhat past its glory days (owing to the vicissitudes of German twentieth-century history) but still charming. I’ve been going there for years, and though there have been little indicators of fresh investment (smart new signs, posh ladies’ loos) the essential character remains the same. The …

The Cow Jumped Over the… Upright

15-year-old Regina jumps over an obstacle with her cow Luna in the Bavarian town of Traunstein in southern Germany. Regina decided to pursue her hobby of show jumping, despite not having a horse at her disposal A drastic solution to the pony-mad-but-ponyless problem. Nice touch with the boots. Incidentally, “Golden Gorse” aka Muriel Wace, the …

Tattoo Boo

Tattooing a pony with the famous Rolling Stones tongue logo would break animal protection laws, a Münster court said on Wednesday. The court in the northwestern German city ruled against the white pony’s owner, who wanted to tattoo the animal’s right hind thigh to make it “more uniquely beautiful.” He had already shaved a large …

Past Pluperfect Prestissimo Player of the Game

“Ever since he had drifted into India on a troop-ship, taken, with an old rifle, as part payment for a racing debt, The Maltese Cat had played and preached polo to the Skidars’ team on the Skidars’ stony pologround. Now a polo-pony is like a poet. If he is born with a love for the …

Polo at Maifeld

Thank you to Christoph Curvers and Annika of PACE Magazine for being my guides at my first polo tournament in Berlin. I’ll publish a few photos I took this week, along with some tidbits which are probably familiar to polo fans, but were fresh and fascinating to me, and may be to non-polo-ers who are …