A tribute to K M Peyton, 1929-2023, by Linda Newbery

"Best known for the Flambards quartet and the Pennington stories, Kathy wrote a number of stand-alones that were just as impressive."

Linda Newbery edits Writers Review. Her recent young adult novel The Key to Flambards continues K M Peyton's Flambards quartet into the 21st Century, and is published by David Fickling Books. 

It came as a sad shock to learn that K M (Kathleen) Peyton has died aged 94, after a remarkable and distinguished career as a writer for both children and adults. Many readers love her Flambards quartet and the Pennington novels, and she's influenced many another author, including me - she was (possibly unintentionally) a pioneer of young adult fiction in the 70s and 80s, along with other such 'golden age' authors as Robert Cormier, Jill Paton Walsh, Jean Ure, Alan Garner, Robert Westall and Aidan Chambers. One of her extraordinary achievements was to publish books over eight decades - I wonder if there's another author in the world who can match that? Surely very few. 

I first came across K M Peyton while training as an English teacher, when I happened upon Flambards in the college library. I well remember how eagerly I devoured it, captivated by the setting, the characters, the social issues and how beautifully and economically she evoked countryside, seasons and weather. I went on to read more and more of her work, and she introduced me to young adult fiction, which hadn't existed in my own teenage years. So I owe her a great deal - especially as, many years later, she gave me permission to continue the Flambards story in my own novel The Key to Flambards, about Christina's great-great-granddaughter, set in 2018. On my website, I've written quite extensively about how I became friends with Kathy and about the various elements of the quartet that I wanted to pick up in my story, so I won't repeat that here beyond explaining how we met: I was at the time a regular reviewer for Books for Keeps magazine, and asked to interview her for the Authorgraph feature. She invited me to her Essex home, and from then on we met regularly at publishers' parties or for lunch in Chelmsford, until she became less mobile and I visited her at home each year. A couple of times, staying overnight, I made a point of doing some writing in bed, in the hope that a little of the Peyton magic would get into my words. 

Kathy's Carnegie Medal

Readers may not know that the M of K M Peyton referred to Kathy's husband Mike, an illustrator, writer and sailor. For a while they wrote serialised stories together, Mike supplying plot details while Kathy did the writing. Before that, Kathy had published her own first novel, The Horse from the Sea, when she was only 15; she once showed me her handwritten first draft of that story. She also showed me her MBE, awarded for services to children's literature, but I was keener to see her Carnegie Medal - she won that for The Edge of the Cloud, the second of the Flambards books, as well as the Guardian Prize for the trilogy (as it was then). Other accolades include the Children's Book Award, for Darkling. Numerous other titles were shortlisted for the Carnegie and in 1966 she was declared runner-up for Thunder in the Sky, the year the judges decided not to award the Medal - she always retained a sense of aggrieved bemusement about that! (And in my opinion, Thunder in the Sky would have been a worthy winner.)

So what were the qualities in her writing that earned her such acclaim and such devotion from her readers?

David Fickling, editor of many of her books, has called her 'a born writer', and surely she was - with the desire to write from an early age, and an enviable gift of fluency that made writing look easy. In our conversations she told me that she didn't like revising her work, and did so only at the request of editors, sometimes reluctantly. She was described by John Rowe Townsend (I think it was him) as 'an Ancient Mariner of a storyteller' for her compelling plots. She was particularly good at action, whether it involved horses and hunting, early aviation or mountain-climbing - the finale of The Boy who Wasn't There is truly nail-biting. Her characters and the tensions among them were never less than compelling; she was attuned to adolescent yearnings, frustrations and conflicts, and several of her stories involved a young person at odds with a demanding or ambitious parent and determined to find their own way in life. And no one - not even Dick Francis or Cormac McCarthy - has written about horses better than she did; their beauty, grace and vitality, their personalities.

Meg Rosoff is another author who was impressed by the qualities of Kathy's work, writing in a Books for Keeps article:  "I started reading and couldn’t stop. Something about this woman’s writing resonated directly with my brain and my heart – the unsentimental, sharply-observed, clear voiced love of horses and riders, the trials of adolescence, of friendship and country life and the endless difficulties with families, all rendered in the most intelligent elegant prose."

Best known for the Flambards quartet and the Pennington stories (oh yes - she wrote wonderfully about music, too; Patrick Pennington was a gifted pianist) Kathy produced a number of stand-alones that were just as impressive. A favourite of mine - and, I know, of hers too - is A Pattern of Roses, a beautiful and lyrical mystery which begins when Tim, son of materialistic, status-conscious parents newly moved to a country village, finds a gravestone with his own initials on it, marking the death of a fifteen-year-old boy from Edwardian times with whom he finds affinity. This book was filmed, incidentally giving the young Helena Bonham Carter her first screen role as the imperious, privileged Nettie. The cover shown here features Kathy's own artwork - a trained artist, she provided cover images for several of her novels as well as illustrations for some younger books. Her painterly eye is apparent in her evocation of place, shown here just before Tim finds the other boy's grave:

He walked across the churchyard, through long yellowing grass. It tapered down to the compost heap, the elm-trees closing in on it. A few graves humped themselves untidily; it was the cheap end, Tim thought, the stones, roughly etched, all illegible now with lichen and time. There was a rose-bush growing, with strange, smoky-violet flowers dropping faded petals into the grass. The colour smouldered; the roses, the rotting peat round the gardener's heap, a tangle of old man's beard like white mist over the elm hedge. Tim saw it with his O-Level artist's eye, and smelt the old summer going and all the years and years that had gone before in the decayed, deserted corner of the churchyard.

The Flambards trilogy (as it was then - the fourth book, Flambards Divided, followed after an interval of twelve years) was filmed by Yorkshire television - it's well worth watching, but true Peyton lovers will prefer the novels. I still love, as I did back in my twenties, the sense of imminent change as the First World War approached; the feudalism of Uncle Russell and his obsession with hunting, the social inequities that Christina's cousin Will sees clearly. When the kindly groom Dick is unfairly dismissed by Uncle Russell and Christina visits him at home where he cares for his invalid mother, she contrasts the poverty there with the attention lavished on the Flambards horses:

She thought of the new blanket on Goldwillow that Dick had smoothed the last time she had seen him in the stable: thick and bright with stripes of black and red on deep yellow. The blankets she looked at now were grey and threadbare. Dick's mother was less than a Flambards horse. Dick had always known it. It was a part of his reserve, his quietness, knowing things like that, she thought.

Kathy hadn't at first intended Flambards to be published for children; it was at an editor's insistence that it appeared on a children's list, but as the series progressed to depict Christina in her twenties, widowed, divorced (sorry, spoilers) and contemplating a new beginning, it became what we would now call crossover fiction. Kathy wrote several adult novels too, though they never won acclaim to match her writing for young readers. The Sound of Distant Cheering is set in the world of horse-racing, clear-eyed enough to show the seamy, callous side of the industry alongside the glories and the triumphs: Jeremy, a trainer, thinks:

Oh, Jesus, who would be in the racing game! It was so magnificent at its best, seedy – to put it kindly – at the bottom. Human greed ruined it; the exploitation of one of the kindest, gamest animals on earth for money ...

Possibly her favourite of her adult novels was Dear Fred, set in Victorian Newmarket, in which teenage Laura is obsessed with the champion jockey Fred Archer before finding loves of her own. Kathy felt that this had been published rather uncertainly, not a children's book but not marketed for adults either; in recent years she hoped that it might be reissued. Anyone ...?

Kathy with her dog, Jacko

I will miss my visits. Kathy was always great company - forthright, sparky and funny. Sometimes we talked in her study, a spacious room overlooking the garden and her bird-feeders, with shelves lined with her own books among many others. On the walls were a number of fabric collages she had made, all depicting horses in her distinctive style. On warm days we would sit outside the back door looking out at the large pond, or walk in the wood she'd planted alongside the house over many years - another commendable achievement. 

She'd started another novel, for adults, in her nineties, but failing concentration halted its progress. It's sad to think that there will never be another K M Peyton book - but for her many admirers, or for those new to her work, there's that huge, glorious list of titles to revisit or discover for the first time, and the lasting inspiration she's left to both readers and writers.  

Do you have a favourite memory of Kathy Peyton, or a favourite of her books? We'd love to hear them - please tell us in the comments!

Kathy Peyton, LN and David Fickling, publisher, at the launch of The Key to Flambards

My website has a page dedicated to The Key to Flambards, with more about my admiration for the Flambards stories and the elements I wanted to echo in my own novel.

Guest review by Penny Dolan: HORSE by Geraldine Brooks

 

"Her historical and geographical settings feel convincingly well-researched, whether she is describing families and their great estates, life on the Mississippi or the horrors of the American civil war."

Penny Dolan works as a children’s storyteller and writer. Her last novel for older children, A Boy Called Mouse, was nominated for the Young Quills Historical Fiction Award, and she is currently completing a companion book. As well as being a regular reviewer here, she posts on The History Girls, on An Awfully Big Blog Adventure and can be found on Twitter @PennyDolan1.


Horse, by Geraldine Brooks, a Pulitzer winning novelist, appeared on my book group’s reading list. Its nomination by a member who, to our surprise, is a part-owner of a racehorse, gave Horse strong equestrian support. Additionally, when our local library supplied not four but eight new hardback copies, it was clear that somewhere in the county was a librarian who thought the novel worth purchasing. But was it worth reading? Here are my thoughts.

Brooks’ wide-ranging novel is spread between three American centuries, being a narrative about the early growth of horse-racing and about the meanings within that word “race”. Horse revolves around three specific ideas: a bay foal that became a prize-winning stallion, a lost equine portrait and a skeleton stored within the Smithsonian Museum.

The cover design gives a glimpse at an old painting which reveals a formally dressed black groom holding the rein of a tall brown horse and a black jockey in the coloured silks of the 1850s. Both men appear wary about being “uncovered”. This groom and the bay horse form the core of Brooks’ novel.

When the reader first meets Jarrett, he is an enslaved boy, working beside his father in the stables of a rich Kentucky landowner. After forming a deep bond with the new-born foal named Darley, Jarrett stays close to the creature during its early years. When the colt, re-named Lexington, passes to another landowner, Jarrett follows.

We see that his life is clearly easier than that of black slaves out in the fields. Jarrett is clothed, fed and treated well, principally because of his value to Lexington. Yet both are at the mercy of the wealth, whims and promises of their owners. For example, although gambler and race-course owner Ten Broek had given his word that Lexington would never be whipped, as soon as he has starts promoting timed, high-stakes races on his track, that promise gets forgotten:

Jarrett ‘could see the horse’s flanks heaving in obvious distress. He turned on (the jockey) Meichon. “What were you rowling him for?” he cried. “You could see it wasn’t in him.”

Meichon looked defiant. “Marse Ten Broek say I ‘ave to ride ‘ard. I think – they say – he ‘as bet against us so ‘e want no person to say he cheat.”

Jarrett threw his head back and cursed the sky.’

Even as Jarrett curses, he knows that challenging the master’s actions could mean being sent out to work in the fields or sold.

Moreover, throughout the book, Brooks emphasises his situation as evident in her chapter headings: at first he is Warfield’s Jarrett, then Ten Broek’s Jarrett and finally Alexander’s Jarrett. He is a man without independence.

Around this historical core, Brooks wraps a contemporary tale about two academics meeting in Washington in 2019. Jess, an Australian, and interested in bones since childhood, is an anthropologist and Smithsonian scholar. who starts to study a forgotten equine skeleton to discover more about the horse’s identity and power of endurance. Theo, an Afro-American art historian, is studying the role of Black men during the early years of horse-racing. When an energetic dog brings the pair together, their quest leads them through all the hidden archives of the Institute. However, their deepening relationship also emphasises social pressures within modern America and the insidious influence of prejudice.

The third thread in the novel lies in that mysterious painting partly seen on the cover. An early character, Thomas J. Scott, is a racing journalist and a hopeful equine portraitist. As he paints Dr Warfield’s horses, he notices how helpful and sensitive the boy is, and does something kind.

“I remembered I’d promised him a painting . . . and as sometimes happens when the stakes are small, the painting came together with an uncommon felicity. I captured the light on that rich bay coat and the intelligent look in the eye. I considered keeping the piece myself. I was glad in the end that I did not, when I saw the look of joy on the boy’s face. It occurred to me then his condition afforded him few possessions he might claim as his own.”

Scott’s painting passes through Jarrett’s family until, in 1954 it becomes the property of Martha Jackson, a New York gallery owner who exhibits bold modern paintings. She has her own secret reason for keeping the small portrait which, in due time, will unlock the equine mystery for Jess and Theo, and act as part of the powerful ending.

Knowing little about gambling or horse racing before reading Horse, I had not realised that equine paintings, such as Stubbs' famous “Whistlejacket”, are an aspect of the business of horse-breeding and were adverts promoting the best bloodlines.

Perhaps, because there are more passionate and personal novels that give a voice to the life on the plantations, Horse does not attempt to offer the reader a close inner experience. Brooks, as a white woman novelist, writes with a distanced third person narrative voice which allows her to expand her themes and also allows her concluding chapters to stand out clearly. In addition, her historical and geographical settings feel convincingly well-researched, whether she is describing families and their great estates, life on the Mississippi or the horrors of the American civil war. I appreciated the contrast between Jarrett’s time, the easy academic life within the museums and galleries and the edgy emotions within Jackson Pollock and the art scene of 50’s New York.

While I did not entirely love Horse, I did love Jarrett as a character, and I enjoyed the care and balance within Brook’s storytelling. I welcomed the world that the novel introduced me to, and the strength of its still-relevant messages. Yes: well worth the read.

Horse is published by Little, Brown.

Guest review by Sally Nicholls: RISK, ODDS AGAINST and more - the novels of Dick Francis

"It's a long time since I've been so thoroughly swallowed by a novel ..."

 

Sally Nicholls is the author of nineteen books for big children, little children and teenagers. Her novels have been shortlisted for (and won!) numerous awards, including the Waterstones Children's Book Prize, the Costa Book Award, the Guardian Children's Book Prize and the Carnegie Medal. Her work includes Ways to Live Forever, Things a Bright Girl Can Do and The Button Book. She lives in Liverpool with her husband and two children.

In the corner of my mother’s bookcase, looking rather incongruous next to field guides to birds and plants and illustrated hardbacks on British history, sit a small collection of red-jacketed paperback thrillers. My mother is not a natural thriller-reader. She likes autobiographies, books about religion, fiction about good people being decent to each other. But the thrillers, all by the same author, have sat on her shelves my entire life, surviving innumerable clear outs. Their red spines are as familiar to me as the battered Shirley Hughes books I read to my children.

Home for half term, looking for something to read, I pick one off the shelf.

Risk by Dick Francis.

Six hours later, I put down the book, somewhat stunned. What just happened? It’s a long time since I’ve been so thoroughly swallowed by a novel. I feel breathless, as though, like the jockey hero of Risk, I’ve been chloroformed, kidnapped, bundled off in a Red Cross ambulance minutes after winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup on a rank outsider. Captive to the yellowing pages, I am addicted. I want more.

I go on social media to rave about my new discovery, and am greeted with delight. One person tells me Dick Francis is the reason she became a writer. Several talk about finding him in the unbookish houses they grew up in. They all agree how readable he is. ‘I read one when I was pregnant,’ someone else says. ‘I was sort of alarmed by how addictive it was. Felt like snorting cocaine. I wondered if I read another if I would be forever condemned to reading nothing but his books.’

I am not at all surprised by this. Writers are snobs about bad writing, but they respect anyone who does a job well. Dick Francis is what George Orwell called a ‘good bad writer’. His books are mid-twentieth-century thrillers in the American vein; they are by no stretch of the imagination literature. But they are very, very good at what they do. He has the sort of simple style it is incredibly hard to emulate. He is emotionally sound, and quietly humorous. He is the only three-time winner of the Edgar, and one of only two writers to win both the Edgar and the Golden Dagger for the same novel, Whip Hand. (The other was John Le Carre for The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.)

Over the next few weeks, I read seven more Dick Francis thrillers in quick succession: Odds Against, Whip Hand, Come to Grief, In the Frame, Nerve, Reflex and Straight. These are all recommendations by friends on social media, and any would make a good starting point to his work, though it should be noted that Odds Against, Whip Hand and Come to Grief are a mini-series about Sid Halley, Francis’ most popular hero. You may prefer to read them in order, though you don’t really have to.

The books are very similar. Francis’ heroes are all basically the same person; practical, intelligent men of about thirty, physically resilient, emotionally reticent, frequently wounded (literally and metaphorically) and splendidly moral. When Philip Nore takes a bribe to lose a horse race in Reflex I am genuinely shocked, though he quickly comes to his senses. They all also have broadly the same plot. The men, who are generally jockeys, stumble upon evil and are compelled to do something about it. They use their wits to investigate, despite the clearly increasing danger. At some point, about two-thirds of the way through, they are set upon by rent-a-thugs and attacked or kidnapped. They are hurt. (As an ex-jockey himself, Francis wrote with great authority about pain, though never gratuitously). Their loved ones beg them to rest, but they struggle on, breaking their chains, outsmarting their enemies, and, in one memorable finale, winning a major horse-race for the sheer joy of forcing the villain to congratulate them on live television.

These wounded heroes are part of Francis’ appeal. They may be steely-eyed under pressure, but they come with well-realised neuroses and insecurities. They don’t just walk away from their wounds, they carry them with them for the remainder of the book, and sometimes into the next one. When one ends up trapped in his car after a car crash, we get a meticulous description of how he is cut out. Francis (or apparently usually his wife) does his research. Another joy of the books lies in the details of the worlds he writes about, be they horse racing, painting, photography or the rare gem trade. I’ve never been to a horse race in my life. But his knowledge makes me interested. He cares, so so do I.

The emotional honesty is perhaps why Francis has so many female fans. He writes women well; be they spinster headmistresses who outmanoeuvre thugs, or junior editors with an eye for genius. There aren’t many seventies thriller-writers who would give Sid a cheerful, untidy PhD student as a love interest. And never once are the women ‘fridged’, raped or hurt. If a villain wants to get to a Francis hero, he does the decent thing and bops him on the head, ties him up, shoves him into his car, and duffs him up in a deserved stable yard somewhere. There is romance, but no on-stage sex and no swearing, apparently because Francis didn’t want to upset the Queen Mother, who was a fan.

Rumours abound that Francis’ wife actually wrote the books. He left school at sixteen, she was a publishers’ reader with a university degree. I’m not so sure. The books are extremely competently written, but they are also intensely male. Francis himself said “I am Richard, Mary was Mary, and Dick Francis was the two of us together.” Their son described them as ‘Siamese twins joined at the pencil.’ Some sort of collaboration seems most likely.

For me as a writer, something good always comes from falling nose-first into a book or a series. I’m certain I wouldn’t have written Things a Bright Girl Can Do and A Chase in Time (at least not in quite the same way) if I hadn’t fallen so hard for Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. I’m not sure what will come out of all these racing thrillers, but I’m certain something will. I’m looking forward to finding out what.

Dick Francis' novels are published by Penguin.

Sally Nicholls' Things a Bright Girl Can Do is included in this round-up of suffragette fiction for younger readers and adults.