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About the Author
We always had ponies, some wicked, some less wicked, but we loved them all. My first was a piebald called Mischief because if he decided to escape, there was no bolt, no knot, no lock that he could not undo. When he galloped, you were really flying, but he steadfastly refused to jump anything, even a twig, which was very embarrassing when we went out hunting. I was sent away to a convent boarding school aged 10, and I hated it. My dog objected to my departure so much that he used to sit on my suitcase and nip anybody who came near it. During the holidays, although strictly not allowed, he slept on my bed, which was fine, except on Christmas Eve when I had to banish him downstairs because he always tried to bite Santa Claus. When I was 14, my mother saw an advertisement in the paper advertising a 5 year old mare called Miss Muffet for sale. We went to look at her. She was wild, having lived on a hillside all her life, and so dirty that to begin with we didn’t know what colour she was. Although we took apples, she would neither look at us nor listen, only sniffed the wind and trembled. I don’t know what it was – something in the prick of her ears and the way she seemed so lonely, perhaps – but we could not help but bring her home. When we washed her, this beautiful red colour emerged and, although I didn’t know it at the time, that was the beginning of my book Blood Red Horse. When she finally allowed us to be her friends, Muffet turned out to be the most loyal, steadfast and brave horse I have ever known. She became an Endurance champion and, on my 21st birthday, was honoured as Endurance Champion of the Year. When she died, aged nearly 30, we lost something irreplaceable. In Blood Red Horse, Sacramenta and Hosanna are both a tribute to her. Just as Hosanna inspires Will and Kamil, so Muffet inspired me.
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As the third of seven children, brought up in a large, rambling house in the country full of creaking floorboards, dry rot, the smell of woodsmoke and books, my older sisters and I first used stories to explain the inexplicable. Why, when the thunder clapped and the lights went out, did the candle always cast a shadow like a giant spider? Was the spider always there and we just never noticed? And was that dark lump in the corner the head of our ancestor Francis Towneley, executed for his faith in 1746, and a lock of whose hair we had in a little frame in the drawing room? Our nanny, who was Irish and once threw the cat out of the window, scolded us for being silly. But as we thought she was a witch, we simply added her to our stories.
Now I am married and live in the city of Glasgow with my husband and children. Our garden is not big enough for a horse! When our third child was a baby, I went to university and studied history, especially medieval history. It was so full of wonderful stories of people both wicked and heroic, and horses played such an enormous part in their lives, that it was almost impossible not to write about them. So, although I work as a journalist, in 2002 I couldn’t resist one day just trying out the first line of a book, then a second, and then, before I knew it, I was away. The results are the de Granville novels which, I hope, show you, as clearly as Muffet showed me, that ‘the air of heaven is that which blows between a horse’s ears’.