in the snow. Researching this, I spent a harrowing yet uplifting day with Ted Barnes, the awesome field officer of World Horse Welfare, who showed me how horrifically neglected, even tortured horses, reduced to mere skeletons, are rescued and lovingly restored to healthy, happy and confident working lives.
Another stepping stone was meeting Helen Yeadon, who with her husband Michael runs the most wonderful sanctuary for retired and rescued racehorses at Greatwood in Wiltshire. Here these great animals are rested and nursed back to health and often new careers. In this Garden of Eden they bond not only with impossibly naughty Shetland ponies, goats and dogs and a rooster called Rodney, but most touchingly with autistic children who regularly visit the sanctuary. Helen herself gave me invaluable advice on restoring Mrs Wilkinson to health and happiness.
I’d also like to thank Janet Perrins, Greatwood’s fundraiser, Emma Cook of World Horse Welfare, and the Blue Cross and the Brooke Hospital for their help in horse rescue work.
My horse heroine, Mrs Wilkinson, loses an eye before she is saved so it was crucial to meet two gallant one-eyed mares, who won many races as well as the public’s adoration, to see how they coped with the argy-bargy of the racetrack.
The first mare was Material World, or Daisy, a terrific character as tough as she is adorable. Owned and trained by Suzy Smith and Sergio Graham-Jones down in Brighton, she is now happily in foal to Shirocco. The second mare is Barshiba, trained by the great David Elsworth, who recently won a major race at Haydock with Hayley Turner up.
One of my heroes does a stint in gaol where he finds huge satisfaction in looking after one of the rescued racehorses being restored to health in the prison stables. I am therefore grateful again to Andrew Parker Bowles, founder and former chairman of Retraining of Racehorses (ROR), and to Di Arbuthnot, its director of operations, who pioneered a similar scheme at Hollesley Bay Prison in Suffolk.
Leaving prison, my hero works in a yard and dreams of becoming a jockey. Like many stable staff, he realizes this dream by taking a course at the excellent Northern Racing College in Doncaster. Again, I must thank the racing school’s training coordinator, Michelle Beardsley, for her help.
It was also a great thrill to watch Leroy Jones, a stable lad at Tom George’s, come fourth out of a large field when he made his debut in the Berkeley Hunt point-to-point at Woodford last year. I would like to thank John Berkeley, president of the hunt, hunt secretary Tom Whittaker and Louis Purvis, head of the hunt supporters, for a marvellous afternoon.
One of my favourite characters in Jump! is Chisolm, a goat, who becomes Mrs Wilkinson’s inseparable companion after being rescued from a dreadful fate. I would like to thank Southern Animal Rights Coalition, and especially Niccy Tapping, for their help on this subject. Marilyn Sheppard, a goat addict, told me some wonderful stories about these idiosyncratic creatures. I am hugely indebted to Hazel Johns for sharing her wonderful knowledge of geese and ganders and for her take on the mysteries of nature.
I must thank Tom and Sophie George for inviting me to a Lawn Meet at their house, where I was able to witness in glorious surroundings how hunting operates after the ban.
Another stepping stone in the book was meeting Tom and Sophie’s then head lad, Sally (Minnie) Hall, who is encyclopaedic in her knowledge of horses and racing, and spent hours discussing my story with me. To see her working with horses was also an inspiration and although we miss her in Gloucestershire I am glad she is now a trainer herself in Bedfordshire and one of her young horses, Clerk’s Choice, has already notched up three wins.
The winter game, as jump racing is romantically known, produces, like Minnie, the most marvellous women: strong, combining beauty with kindness like Shakespeare’s Sylvia, capable of rising in the dark to ride out, partying until first light, yet retaining a work ethic to die for. Glamorous Amazons – I call them Glamazons.
Two Glamazons – Liz Ampairee, marketing guru, and Jacques Malone, who runs her own PR company in Dublin – truly looked after me while I wrote Jump!, endlessly answering questions, coming up with ideas, taking me to the races, introducing me to owners, trainers and jockeys, and entering wonderfully into the spirit of the book.
Jacques, in particular, took me and Liz on a magic trip to Dublin, which included a day