The Fox In the Cupboard: A Memoir - Hardcover

Shilling, Jane

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743276817 ISBN 13: 9780743276818

Publisher: Touchstone, 2005

Synopsis

A personal account of the author's experiences with the lesser-known and sometimes humorous world of horses and hunting outlines her decision to fulfill her childhood dream of learning to ride, her lessons from a Master of Foxhounds, and her observations about the recent fox hunting ban. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

Jane Shilling is a columnist with The Times (London) who lives in Greenwich, England, with her son. She hunts with the Ashford Valley.

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. In this splendid memoir, London Times columnist Shilling details her passion for foxhunting, a slow romance that begins midlife with a desire to ride, which she painstakingly learns to do, then escalates: she buys her own horse and becomes an avid rider and devoted hunter. The lure of foxhunting, a demanding and highly regimented sport with packs of hounds trained from puppyhood, isn't an American penchant (and foxhunting with hounds was recently outlawed in Britain), but Shilling brings the world of the hunt to vivid and bloody life. She lovingly and breathtakingly describes every detail, from the dressing of horse and rider and the wild determination of the hounds to the thrill of the chase, right down to the capture of the "talismanic" brush (the tail of the hunted fox). In telling the history of foxhunting, the breeding of hounds, Shilling's hunt club, her move from the city (London) to the country (Greenwich) and the transcendent emotions she feels, Shilling shifts seamlessly between past and present, personal and political. Readers might find Shilling too glib on the violence of the hunt, which she insists is neither as cruel as bullfighting nor as violent as other means of "controlling" foxes. Few may come away sharing Shilling's hunt politics, but none will fail to appreciate the provocation of her arguments nor fail to enjoy her evocative tale of her love affair with the English countryside in all its feral glory.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Touchstone
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0743276817
• ISBN 13: 9780743276818
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336