Churchill at the Gallop - Couverture rigide

Scott's book, blessed with richly evocative photographs, wraps Churchill's equestrian pursuits neatly into the context of his times... Scott gives us a true horseman's view. His asides and personal examples are as enlightening as his narrative is vivid. --Literary Review, Robin Oakley

Churchill at the Gallop is a wonderful addition to the Churchill canon and will be prized by Churchillians. It will also be greatly valued by equestrians and those with a genuine affection for the horse. --The Churchill Bulletin, Journal of the International Churchill Society.

I strongly recommend Brough Scott's new book Churchill at the Gallop. There are two fascinations in the story. The first is how horses tested and shaped Churchill's character. Sometimes he was so bumptious that one sympathises with Lord North, who saw him fall into a brook while hunting with the Warwickshire and wrote in his diary, If he had been drowned, it would have saved England from the disgrace of having such a SKUNK for a minister. But on the whole, the zest and courage excuse the rest. Scott quotes a contemporary description of WSC playing polo aged 50: 'Abruptly he sees his chance, and he gathers his pony and charges in, neither deft nor graceful but full of tearing physical energy and skillful with it too.' The second, which Scott conveys so well, is the central importance of the horse in what we now call networking in the years before the first world war. Churchill's ambition needed horses to help him vault high. --Charles Moore, The Spectator

It is an often-forgotten fact that horses played an important part in Winston Churchill's life. They were his escape in childhood, his challenge in youth, his transport in war, his triumph in sport and his diversion in old age. Renowned author, broadcaster and former jockey, Brough Scott, follows in Churchill's hoofprints from galloping his pony in Blenheim Park, to topping the riding class whilst army training at Sandhurst, taking part in a famous cavalry charge in Sudan, playing polo in India, hunting foxes in Leicestershire and breeding racehorses near his home in Kent, after a minor interlude out of the saddle to tend to the historic task of winning the Second World War.