Waterhouse, Arthur

About the author

Arthur Waterhouse wrote several children’s books, and also wrote under the pseudonym Vera Painter. As far as I can tell, Dark Champion was his only pony book. It is a fairly conventional horse rescue tale, interwoven with the story of a girl’s mysterious origins. Arthur Waterhouse was perhaps not the world’s greatest expert on horses. According to Hannah Fleetwood, who has written a review of the book, ‘I would hazard a guess that he did not really know one end of a horse from another: I found [as] with Peter Grey’s Kit Hunter series, [that] although the story/ies are great there are rather large and gaping blunders where the horses are concerned. In this one, the main thing is [the way] the children gallop and jump Jim straight from the stable and cold. Warming up is never given a second glance and like Peter Grey’s books it is assumed/taken for granted that all horses need regular good gallops and can be jumped day after day after day without getting fed up/soured.’

Finding the book
Easy to find in all its printings, and not expensive.

Links and sources
Hannah’s review


Bibliography


Dark Champion

Brockhampton Press, Leicester, 1948, illus J Abbey, 188 pp.
Reprinted by Brockhampton  1950,1954, 1965

By mistake, Farmer Webster buys a neglected black horse at auction. He decides to keep the horse, feed him up, and sell him at the next auction, but his daughter Brenda falls for the horse, and with the help of her friend David, schemes to keep him. Once recovered, the horse breaks out and finds his way to the home of Colonel Martin, who plays a much greater part in Brenda’s life than she could everhave imagined.