With the death of Diana, the last of the three Pullein-Thompson sisters, the heyday of the pony-crazed pre-pubescent girl is over. For at least three decades — from the 1950s to the 1980s — daughters of the middleclass were expected and encouraged to go through a horsey phase, when their idea of heaven was to muck out a stable or curry-comb a mane, even if they never sailed over the last fence to win a red rosette. Such ambitions were fuelled by pony books, the majority bearing the Pullein-Thompson byline.
In their stories even a girl from an unpromising urban background might acquire a broken-down pony and school it to triumph in gymkhanas. Janet, for instance, in Diana Pullein-Thompson’s Janet Must Ride, was a