Riding Magazine was first published in June 1936. It was edited by R S Summerhays, who was the author of many well known equestrian books. The junior section was edited by Col C E G Hope, who went on to found Pony Magazine with David Murphy.
Riding Magazine was less competition-based than Horse and Hound. It also had very little in the way of horses advertised for sale: there were some, but how productive the advertisements were in what was a monthly publication I do not know.
Riding had a long history, finally ceasing publication in March 2000. Its glory days were in its 1930s editions. They are fragile now, but were printed on good quality paper, and were well illustrated, showing a gilded inter-war world where there seemed little that could bother its readers.
The advertisements were from the smartest Bond Street tailors. This was not, you felt, a world where patched jodhpurs and hanging over the fence, longing for a ride, was something that featured much.
All that changed with the advent of war. Riding wrote editorials on how to cope with the privations of war. They even advised their readers to sacrifice their horses. This threat receded, but Riding told you how to start your own mushroom farm and how to raise rabbits for the table, using your stables. With the resumption of normal life, Riding remained, quite literally, a smaller magazine, but it carried on for over half a century.
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