Vernon Bowen

Vernon Bowen (1905- ) wrote several children’s stories, amongst which is The Emperor’s White Horses, based on what really happened to the Spanish Riding School during World War 2.   If you search the Internet for Vernon Brown, there is material on the Internet about a Vernon Bowen and an Encyclopaedia of Flying Saucers, which manuscript famously disappeared when submitted to the Air Force.  Conspiracy theories abound.  Whether this Vernon Bowen is the same as the author of The Emperor’s White Horses I do not know.

Finding the books:

Sources and links:

Terri A. Wear:  Horse Stories, an Annotated Bibilography, Scarecrow Press, 1987

Thanks to Lisa Catz for the photograph.

Vernon Bowen and flying saucers: which may or may not be the same author.

Bibliography - horse books only

The Emperor’s White Horses

D McKay, New York, 1956, illus Hans Kreis, 147 pp.

Set during the Second World War, this describes the fate of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna and its
Lipizzaners.  The boy Franz flees his home to finds cousin Willi, who works at the Spanish Riding School,
and discovers once he gets there the peril the horses are in from bombing raids.