Short stories

Pamela Macgregor-Morris was born in London in 1925. When she was five, her family bought a weekend house near Goodwood. Pamela acquired a pony and was ‘hooked on the horse’ for life. In 1946, the family moved to Dartmoor, where Not Such a Bad Summer is set. There Pamela wrote her first books, as well as starting to write for Horse and Hound. She carried on her journalistic career by becoming assistant to The Times’s equestrian and polo correspondent John Board, whom she succeeded in 1956. She bred hunters before running a stud of riding ponies with her husband. Pamela Macgregor-Morris had wide-ranging interests: her books include titles on circuses, the Hunters’ Improvement Society and many general equine titles, as well as her pony books.

Macgregor-Morris wrote eight pony books. Lionel Edwards illustrated most of them: Sheila Rose did Not Such a Bad Summer, and Clear Round is not illustrated. Her pony book career spanned 20 years, and covered most of the genre: the horse telling the tale of its life; earning a living through horses and the classic holiday story. She also rode widely on many equine subjects.

Finding the books
All her books, apart from Clear Round, which was reprinted as a Collins Pony Library edition, and Topper, have become difficult to find. Blue Rosette is particularly difficult.

Links and sources
Biographical information in History of the Hunters’ Improvement Society