Grant, K M

Biography

K M Grant (Katie M Grant) was brought up in Lancashire, one of a family of seven children, brought up in a large and decaying house on the edge of the Lancashire moors. The house, as old houses do, had its own peculiar ways: the candle that cast a shadow in the shape of a spider, and the dark lump in the corner that could have been the head of their ancestor, Francis Towneley, executed in 1746. K M Grant and her sisters told each other stories to explain the house’s oddities.

Their ponies were not so Gothic. Katie’s first pony, a piebald called Mischief, was an escape artist extraordinaire. There was no bolt that could hold him once he decided to go. When she was fourteen, the family went to look at a five-year-old mare called Miss Muffett. She was wild, and filthy, but they bought her. Once they had her home, they washed her, and underneath the filth was a red mare. She became an endurance champion, and when she died, aged 30, K M Grant said ‘we lost something irreplaceable.’ Miss Muffett was the inspiration for the red horse Hosanna that appears in her De Granville series. Set during the Crusades, it is the story of Will, Gavin, whom Ellie is supposed to marry, and Will’s red horse, Hosanna. There are three books in the de Granville trilogy, and a connector, set in their castle, Hartslove, at the time of the Crimean War.

De Granville
Blood Red Horse
Green Jasper
Blaze of Silver
Hartslove

Finding the books
Still in print, and easy to find secondhand.

Links and sources
K M Grant’s website

Bibliography (pony books only)

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