Violet Morley Heathcote is an author about whom I have been able to track down remarkably little information. As far as I am aware, she wrote just the one book, Fiander’s Horses. Fiander is a girl who sets out to work with horses. Fiander’s Horses seems to be a book you either love or loathe: it’s mentioned with great affection on horsy bulletin boards. When it came out, the book was reviewed in Pony Magazine by Lt Col C E G Hope, who said:
“Some books come alive at once ,some do not. I am afraid that, to me, Fiander’s Horses, by Violet M. Heathcote (Oxford University Press, 10s 6d.) is one of these. Fiander was a young girl, age not stated, who went to work for two years as a stable girl, first in a hunting establishment, then with a private owner of hacks, then in a racing stable; the idea was to save up money to buy a horse of her own, and then work on a farm with her uncle. Well, she brought it off and I am bound to say she thoroughly deserved to; yet somehow I found I could not care what happened to Fiander or her horses.”
Pony, October 1953
I have a copy of the book, and have not yet managed to finish it, so thus far I side with Colonel Hope.
Finding the book: not the easiest title to track down, particularly with a dustjacket. The paperback is, if anything, even more elusive than the hardback.
Sources and links:
British Library Catalogue
Pony Magazine, October 1953
Violet Heathcote
Fiander’s Horses
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1953, illus Jenefer Peter, 247 pp.
Scottie Books, Transworld Publishers, pb, 1956
Fiander works for two years as a stable girl, first in a hunting stable, then in
a private
house and then a racing stable. Through all this, she manages to save up
enough money
to buy a horse of her own and work on a farm with her uncle.
Bibliography -
