J. K. Rowling cut a very elegant figure on Friday when she attended the fourth day of Royal Ascot, the grandest and most prestigious event in the UK’s racing calendar. Dressed in pale blue with a hat of heroic proportions, she was accompanied by her husband Dr Neil Murray and friends. Despite growing up within walking distance of Chepstow race course, this is the first indication we have from Rowling herself that she has an interest in either horse racing, or indeed horses themselves.
Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i’ the receiving earth;Henry V; Prologue William Shakespeare
In all of her early work, Rowling doesn’t really talk of horses at all. Certainly not normal, non-magical, terrestrial horses.
Harry’s broom jumped into his hand at once, but it was one of the few that did. Hermione Granger’s had simply rolled over on the ground and Neville’s hadn’t moved at all. Perhaps brooms, like horses, could tell when you were afraid, thought Harry; there was a quaver in Neville’s voice that said only too clearly that he wanted to keep his feet on the ground.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone Chapter 9
The only reference I could find in Harry Potter cannon at all is to the Riddle riding party, where the presence of horses helps to reinforce the social, if not magical, distinction between the Riddles and the Gaunts. Such parties would not have been unknown along the winding lane, that her own childhood cottage stands upon in Tutshill.
The jingling, clopping sounds of horses and loud, laughing voices were drifting in through the open window. Apparently the winding lane to the village passed very close to the copse where the house stood. Gaunt froze, listening, his eyes wide. Morfin hissed and turned his face towards the sounds, his expression hungry. Merope raised her head. Her face, Harry saw, was starkly white.
‘My God, what an eyesore!’ rang out a girl’s voice, as clearly audible through the open window as if she had stood in the room beside them. ‘Couldn’t your father have that hovel cleared away, Tom?’
‘It’s not ours,’ said a young man’s voice. ‘Everything on the other side of the valley belongs to us, but that cottage belongs to an old tramp called Gaunt and his children.Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Chapter 10
Casual Vacancy, likewise has an absence of horses and ponies, despite its rural location, except in the recollection of Terri, in the distant past.
‘I like horses,’ she had told Nana Cath.
There had been a school trip to the agricultural show, in the days before Terri’s mother had left. The class had met a gigantic black Shire covered in horse brasses. She was the only one brave enough to stroke it. The smell had intoxicated her. She had hugged its column of a leg, ending in the massive feathered white hoof, and felt the living flesh beneath the hair, while her teacher said, ‘Careful, Terri, careful!’ and the old man with the horse had smiled at her and told her it was quite safe, Samson wouldn’t hurt a nice little girl like her.Casual Vacancy Chapter II
Things equine only start to get introduced in the third Strike book, before a positive avalanche of horses in Lethal White.
‘Did you ever have a pony?’
She glanced at him, surprised. In that fleeting full-face look he noted the heaviness of her eyes, her pallor. She had clearly not slept much.
‘What on earth do you want to know that for?’
‘This feels like the kind of car you’d take to the gymkhana.’
Her reply had a touch of defensiveness:
‘Yes, I did.’ He laughed, pushing the window down as far as it would go and resting his left hand there with the cigarette.
‘Why is that funny?’
‘I don’t know. What was it called?’ ‘Angus,’ she said, turning left. ‘He was a bugger. Always carting me off.’
‘I don’t trust horses,’ said Strike, smoking.
‘Have you ever been on one?’ It was Robin’s turn to smile. She thought it might be one of the few places where she would see Strike truly discomforted, on the back of a horse.
‘No,’ said Strike. ‘And I intend to keep it that way.’
‘My uncle’s got something that’d carry you,’ said Robin. ‘Clydesdale. It’s massive.’
‘Point taken,’ said Strike drily, and she laughed.Career of Evil Chapter 23
When Rowling was writing Career of Evil in 2016, she had just got planning permission to build a horse riding school a short distance from her Edinburgh home, with construction being completed in 2018. This of course may simply be an investment, but it is also possible that either Jo, or someone close to her, has developed a passion for horses, and via Lake Inspiration, has seeped into her work.
