Caroline Akrill 2

Caroline still continued to write articles and short stories, and a collection of them - Not Quite a Horsewoman - is still in print now. Desmond Elliot “was a book short for his list one year and because my husband worked at the palace he thought it would be jolly good if I wrote a book about the Royals. As my husband never told me anything that went on because I’m such a gossip and I had to get all my royal tittle-tattle from the Daily Mail (how odd that I should later become the publisher of the Duke of Edinburgh and the very soul of discretion) this was a non-starter, so after the extravagant meal, the pills and the Hillaire Belloc, he asked if I had any material tucked away, anything, he said, anywhere, the situation was desperate. I couldn’t think of anything other than piles of yellowing magazine articles insulating the attic. ‘Well, get them down’ he cried, ‘go home and get them down!’ The result was Not Quite a Horsewoman, still selling well twenty years later!”

Other than her non fiction The Art of Showing a Pony, Caroline has (at the moment) written only one novel which does not have an undercurrent of humour. Flying Changes is a particularly unusual pony book; originally intended as as an adult read. It’s very dark, with a main character, Oliver, whose perfectionism and ruthlessness drive him to destruction. The book had a painful birth: “It was far, far darker when it was delivered to Arlington Books. They were simply horrified by it because it was not at all what they were expecting. They had sent me away saying ‘write what you like’ but they wanted another teen book because we already had the market and a paperback publisher waiting. They took out all the darker bits which infuriated me at the time, and it didn’t work anyway because the paperback people said they still couldn’t take it because it ‘clearly was not a children’s book’. They were right, it wasn’t intended to be and it ended up sitting rather uneasily on the shelf.”

Flying Changes isn’t a book you curl up with by the fire as a nice, escapist read. It ends in tragedy, and people are wounded and rejected along the way. But the book did hit a nerve for many - maybe some of its teenage readers saw in Oliver the anti-hero they could rescue. “I received more mail about Flying Changes than any other book. Oliver made quite an impact on the girls. I remember one reader writing in despair ‘I look for him everywhere, everywhere I go, every show, every dressage event, I look for him. I just know he’s there somewhere.’

After the Silver Bridle trilogy, about a stable which trains horses for filming, there have been no further books. Although Caroline didn’t write anything over those years, she was responsible for the excellent J A Allen Equestrian Fiction series, about which you can read more here. “There was a long gap simply because I became a publisher [J A Allen] and spent over 20 years helping other people to write their books about horses. It was incredibly rewarding but mentally exhausting. I’ll get back to writing soon but it won’t be pony novels. I have a novel almost finished but don’t hold your breath!”

And do you, I asked, still ride? “No. I am ridden out. Now I just look and admire with absolutely no desire to clamber back into the saddle – except for the very, very occasional weak moment.”

And they are extremely funny. The Fanes are such vivid creations I wondered if there were real-life Fanes out there somewhere. “Yes, but as individuals, not one family. Lady Jennifer is truly out there and she has never recognised herself!”

Caroline now runs a hotel: the Plas Maenan Hotel. Click here for more information.

Sources: Caroline Akrill

Not Quite A Horsewoman (Allen 1995, 3rd edn)