A Taste of Blue Ribbons

Eugene Lumbers (1916–90) was born in Adelaide, and starting writing during the Second World War. After he was discharged from the Army in 1944, he became news editor of a radio station. He wrote widely for radio, producing features, dramas and documentaries, two of which featured racing. As television began to supplant radio, he became an advertising copywriter, and managed the television department of an advertising agency.

Eugene Lumbers’s interest in horses was sparked when he was six. His father owned an elderly Clydesdale horse who had lost his teeth, and much money and effort was spent trying to produce a set of working false teeth for the horse. Although Eugene Lumbers wasn’t, by his own account, an accomplished rider, his wife was keen, and his one horse book, A Taste for Blue Ribbons, was dedicated to a favourite horse of hers. A Taste of Blue Ribbons was based on an ABC radio programme.

Finding the book
A Taste of Blue Ribbons is reasonably easy to find in Australia, but tricky elsewhere.

Links and sources
Dustjacket of A Taste of Blue Ribbons
Austlit