Adult Sexual and Violent Themes

CAN HUNTING PEOPLE READ?

Of course, they can. That’s just a bit of click bait to irritate hunting folk. But do they read?

They might pick up the “Field” in the dentist’s waiting room for a little harmless property porn. They might turn the pages of “Horse and Hound” in a hotel lounge, particularly if their hunt has had a visit from an H&H journo and they think that their photograph might be in it.

When I was the coursing correspondent for the “Field” back in the 1970’s – it was a weekly then – my loyal readers would boast that they took the magazine off the shelf in WH Smith’s, read my column, and put it back again to avoid paying for it. They gave up even this when the “Field” went monthly and I went to the “Shooting Times” with the saintly Derek Bingham. As one Lancastrian coursing regular described the new-look “Field” to me, “It’s more like bloody ‘Vogue’.”

When I talk about reading, I don’t mean newspapers and magazines. I mean books, although here in North Somerset the natives confusingly tend to call magazines “books”. What do they say, when they mean a book book? No worries. A word for a conventional book is rarely required in the Mendip lexicon.

THWACKUM

I am reminded of the immortal definition of Parson Thwackum in “Tom Jones”, a book coincidentally set in Somerset and featuring that great foxhunter, Squire Western. “When I mention religion, I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England.”

When I mention reading, I mean reading a book; and not only a book but a book of fiction; and not only a book of fiction but one about hunting and coursing.

The nearest most hunting men come to reading fiction is the “Horses For Sale” pages in H&H. Charlotte Metcalf in the April edition of the “Oldie” asks, “Why do men hate novels?” citing the writer Ian McEwan’s theory, “When women stop reading, the novel will be dead.” Even more sensationally the Oldie’s reviews editor quotes the maverick filmmaker John Waters. “If you go home with somebody, and they don’t have books, don’t f**k ‘em.”

I’m not sure that I ever have enjoyed, unlike Mr Waters, such a luxury of choice, but I see his point. With Ms Metcalf, I agree that “nothing compares with escaping into a novel,” especially a hunting novel. When I think of the runs I have enjoyed, the terrifying fences I have jumped, the intractable horses I have tamed, the foul weather I have defied, the fair equestrians I have charmed, whether they had books or not. And all without leaving my armchair.

ENTER MR SPONGE

Although I have a shelf crowded with hunting novels, it would be an exaggeration to claim that their existence indicates a genre as congested as a Boxing Day meet. My “Desert Island” choice of book would be “Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour”. Life would be dull indeed without RS Surtees’ rascally hero even if Surtees is so rude about coursing, “that still small grade of gambling.” But then he doesn’t like steeple chasing either.

Surtees illustrates a sad truth about the reading of novels, particularly by men. Surtees was writing in the golden age of railway travel. His novels first were published in instalments in magazines, the bulk of which were purchased at the fledgling WH Smith’s kiosk for passing the time on lengthy railway journeys. You couldn’t sleep or smoke all the time. Novels were not published between covers until the magazine serial version was complete. Writers like Dickens and Trollope sometimes had no idea how a book would end until the last instalment was with the printer.

My crumbling copy of “That Pretty Little Horse-Breaker” by Mrs Edward Kennard is actually stamped “WH Smith & Son, London”, and so obviously started life at Paddington or St Pancras. I am very fond of Mary Kennard who was a prolific author of hunting rom-coms at the turn of the twentieth century. Will that cad Captain Cyril Mordaunt or ugly Lord Algy marry the penniless orphan of the title? No answers on a postcard, please. Mrs Kennard, a keen rider to hounds living near Market Harborough, was also an audacious early racer of motor cars.

On my shelf, jostling a run of Surtees and Kennard, are Trollope, of course, Whyte Melville, Somerville and Ross, Siegfried Sassoon, Geoffrey Brooke, (he of the Brooke animal charity), LCR Cameron, Molly Keane, and John Welcome, but no one recent.

Perhaps I should re-title this, “Do hunting people write?” Amazon, apart from a few police procedurals which use hunting as a convenient plot environment, offers little more than the late Willy Poole’s “The Hounds of Heaven” in a Kindle version. Amazon prints an enticing trigger warning of “Adult, sexual, and violent themes.” Sadly, I found insufficient evidence of this seductive triad when I bought a copy on publication almost thirty years ago.

I shouldn’t crow. When I sent review copies of my own hunting novel, “Rags To Riches”, to the “Field”, “Horse And Hound”, and the “Spectator”, they were met with a deafening silence. Only Jamie Blackett wrote a very nice review in “Country Life”.

ADULT SEXUAL AND VIOLENT THEMES

Nothing daunted, I have written a sequel, “Electric Rabbit”, which will be published later in the summer. Those who have read the opening volume of my saga will be pleased to learn that most of the characters in “Rags” reappear. If I was listing for “Electric Rabbit” those tags so beloved of Facebook and X-Twitter users, they would include fox hunting, stag hunting, horse racing, greyhound racing, coursing, England, Ireland, and Exmoor. I throw in a little boxing and cock fighting as well.

As for Willy Poole’s triad of adult, sexual, and violent themes, there is as much, or as little, as my intimacy counsellor allows me to get away with. If first you would like to read “Rags To Riches”, it will cost you just £15 for the hardback including postage. I don’t do paperback or Kindle. I plan to survive. Just email my intimacy counsellor for an invoice at sheilablanning@btinternet.com .