'That golden thread, and a zest for life'

In the latest of his series about great huntsmen he knew personally, Alastair Jackson remembers Tim Langley, who spent 30 years at the Berkeley

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TIM LANGLEY was a top-class professional huntsman who served the Berkeley for 30 Years and was held in great esteem, both in his own country and throughout the land. I was privileged to have been able to watch him hunting the Berkeley hounds with such skill when I was an agricultural student.

Many years later, and some 40 years ago now, following his retirement, I went to see him and his wife Alison in their cottage at Berkeley to ask him about his career.

Remembering the pre-war days when he started, he said a huntsman only had to please his master and the whipper-in had to please his huntsman.

He emphasised how the role of the post-war professional huntsman changed.

"These days you have to please a lot of people," he told me. "A smile and a word for everyone. We are, after all, in the business of entertainment." Langley had no hunting background and was brought up in Cheapside, a village near Ascot. He said he remembered the moment he vowed to be a huntsman one day. It was a winter's evening when the Garth hounds passed by on their way home from hunting. The huntsman, Wyndham Daniels, winked as he rode by and called a cheery, "Goodnight, boy." He knew then it was what he wanted to do.

STARTING YOUNG

AT 14, Tim left school to work full-time at the local riding school in return for what he learnt. In 1936, he successfully answered an advert in Horse & Hound for a second horseman with the Enfield Chase.