If you want to write a book, write one! It’s very easy: you only need an exercise book and a pencil. No, that’s an old lady talking. Much easier on your computer. There is nothing to stop you... unless perhaps you can’t think of anything to say. That might be a big problem.
I was very lucky because I could think up stories very easily. I wrote my first book when I was eight. It was called Grey Star, the Story of a Racehorse. When that was finished I immediately started another one, and then another. I was always writing a book and have never stopped since. It took me until I was 15 to actually get one published.
That one was called Sabre the Horse from the Sea. It was about my 10th or 12th book, so I had got plenty of practice in.
All my books were about ponies or horses, as that’s all I thought about when I was a child. I couldn’t have a pony of my own as we lived in a town and my parents couldn’t afford it. So I wrote down all my wishes and invented ponies whose life stories I followed: good owners and bad owners, like Black Beauty.
Since then I have had a book published every year of my life and I am now 86, which makes an awful lot of books. Writing is just a habit for me and I can’t really stop. Luckily I have no trouble thinking up plots, some of them very complicated, which is a great bonus. Perhaps I should have been a crime writer.
I was still at school when my first book was accepted for publication. I had to go up to London to meet the publisher, Mr Archie Black of A and C Black Ltd, Soho Square. It was just at the end of the war and my mother blew all my clothes coupons on a smart new outfit, a grey costume (matching skirt and jacket), a blouse to match, and a hat (no coupons!), a red fez with a black tassel, the only bit of the outfit that I actually liked.
In fear and trembling I went up to London and presented myself to Archie Black. His office in the old Georgian building was lined with books from floor to ceiling and Mr Black himself was dressed in a frock coat and a shirt with a white wing collar as in old photographs of Mr Gladstone.
He was tall and gracious and very complimentary, and said that my book would have to have the best illustrations as I was an unknown author. He would ask Lionel Edwards. Lionel Edwards was the greatest horse artist of his time, very famous. I nearly fainted. And yes, the book was published with illustrations by Lionel Edwards, with an especially beautiful jacket. (I later asked Mr Black if I could have the original of the jacket but he said his daughter wanted it. She had it framed on the wall in her bedroom. Lucky daughter.)
Mr Black published my next three books, then turned down the fourth book, which was not about ponies but about love. He was very disappointed with me. That book was never published, luckily. I later became published by Oxford University Press and they published my most successful book Flambards, which still sells well today nearly 50 years later.
I have been very lucky in my life and am always aware of it. I married a very adventurous man who gave me much exciting material: getting shipwrecked, exploring the outback in Canada in a canoe, getting lost in the Rocky mountains, sleeping in a large drainpipe on the Arlberg pass in the snow, etc. I never lost my love of horses and have spent a good deal of my writing money on my first love: horses.
I bought the love of my life, an Irish tinker cob called Essie, when she was six and rode her almost until she died at 28, and - most exciting of all - for some years I had a share in a racehorse whom I rode myself when he was in training. He never won the Grand National, but provided all the background I needed when I wrote several books about racing, the best of which was Blind Beauty. Combining work with pleasure is the greatest bonus of all.
Yes, how lucky I have been!
— Guardian News & Media Ltd. KM Peyton’s latest book, Wild Lily, is out now from David Fickling Books.
