WHIPPING-IN THE RIGHT WORDS

A top hunting correspondent must master a strange horse, unknown country, and capture the colour of the day – while staying in the saddle

- WILL CURSHAM

SNOW and sleet and driven storm were now full in our faces… I could have laughed aloud, for the pace and the fun and the novelty, till I saw something bigger and uglier that I had ever seen before. And a man riding at it, too! The ditch seemed boundless, the bank was as the Great Wall of China, yet there was Mr Gore and his chestnut flinging upward and into it, and pinned to its side like a fly to a window-pane, till the mare drew herself foot after foot to the summit.”

This was how the great 19th-century hunting correspondent Edward Pennell- Elmhirst, who wrote for The Field under his pen name of Brooksby, described a blistering day with the Ward Union Hunt in Ireland. With its vivid language, adrenaline-inducing drama and acute sense of humour, Brooksby’s writing transports us in an instant to the snow-swept fields of 19thcentury Ireland, where we too can imagine ourselves facing the gargantuan banks.

Nearly a century later, another hunting correspondent, Michael Clayton, transports us into the midst of a day with the Quorn with the same panache: “Those who made the hack back to Walton Thorns for the last draw were indeed rewarded. The air was still; the evening sun a golden ball and the trees and hedges were black against the pale green of the turf. At 4.20 pm hounds spoke enthusiastically… Joint-Master Mr James Teacher, our field master on this day, led us over the superb grass and hedges of Mr Evans’ farm… On one downward swoop over a drop fence, I swear that I had time to check my watch carefully before landing.”