The Marvellous Mongolian

James Aldridge (Harold Edward James Aldridge, 1918–2015) was born in Australia, and lived in London. He was a journalist and war correspondent before he started writing full time. He wrote the well-received Quayle family sequence, set in a small town on the Murray River, and that, like most of his books, reflects the Australia in which he grew up. His books are set in rural Australia, and explore the tensions which grow in small communities. His Australia is one in which horses are a central part. Stephanie Nettell said of his books: 'Horses are a recurrent Aldridge motif. The Broken Saddle is very much the story of his own relationship with one special pony as a boy, with the same fierce feeling for the wild country of Australia as in The True Story of Spit McPhee.”

Probably his best known book is Ride a Wild Pony, which was originally published as A Sporting Proposition. It was made into a film in 1975 with the title Ride a Wild Pony, and Penguin published it under this title in paperback.

Finding the books
All are easy to find.

Sources and links
Contemporary Children’s Authors, ed. Chevalier, 1989 3rd edn.
Austlit - the Australian Literature Resource
The film Ride a Wild Pony