Hunting inspiration

It was a grey and chilly world that I went out into when I started for my first day’s fox-hunting. The winter-smelling air met me as though with a hint that serious events were afoot,” wrote Siegfried Sassoon in his 1928 tome Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man. “Silently I stood in the stable-yard while Dixon led Sheila out of her stall. His demeanour was business-like and reticent. The horses and their accoutrements were polished up to perfection, and he himself, in his darkgrey clothes and hard black hat, looked a model of discretion and neatness. The only one who lacked confidence was myself.” What followed was a turbulent day that “all felt quite different to reading Surtees by the schoolroom fire”. But it was the protagonist’s feeling as he set off on the 10 dark miles for home after his first foray onto the hunting field that anyone who has followed hounds will cherish: “A glow of satisfied achievement.”

For bloodstock agent and Ledbury Joint Master David