Bestselling author reveals ‘horse obsession’ on Desert Island Discs: ‘I could aim to join Carl Hester as a dressage Olympian’

Jojo Moyes, bestselling author of Me Before You, has revealed that she had a “horse obsession” as a child, on a recent episode of Desert Island Discs.

Jojo’s love of horses extended to asking her mother to fill her room with straw and buying a horse without telling her parents – and she even chose an equestrian-themed luxury item on the BBC Radio 4 programme.

The author said that she doesn’t know where her love of horses comes from “because my parents are completely unhorsey people”, but she caught the bug when she was about seven years old.

“I went to the Lee Valley riding school in Walthamstow, which was a council-run equestrian centre set up in the 80s, I think, to give underprivileged kids a taste of a different kind of sport,” she said.

“I used to work 20 hours there mucking out, lifting hay bales, buckets of water, in return for one hour’s riding and I thought that was a great deal.

“I asked my mum if she would fill my room with straw so that I could pretend to be a horse and she did it. I don’t remember much about my childhood, but I do remember that and I also don’t remember being part of clearing it up, so it was pretty game of her to do that.”

Jojo said she knew all the little yards in east London and became friendly with the people who ran them. There was a horse in one who had been found chained to a lamp post.

“A guy had bought him who didn’t know about horses, but had bought him to rescue him, and so he let me pay for Bombardier in instalments. So I had a cleaning job at 14 and I paid off this horse,” she said, adding that she didn’t tell her parents until she had paid the full price.

“They knew that I was helping look after this horse and I said, ‘Oh, by the way, I bought Bombardier’, and there was this silence. And they said, ‘What?’ And I said, ‘I bought him. I bought Bombardier.’ My mother said, ‘Well, you can jolly well go and unbuy him, can’t you? I mean, what are you going to do with a horse?’ And I said, ‘I’m keeping him. You can’t do anything.’

“They said to me afterwards that although they were shocked and slightly appalled, they also thought if my worst rebellion was working to buy the thing that I really wanted and then giving up my lunch money to pay for hay and stuff like that, then I wasn’t doing too badly. They admitted a long time afterwards that they were actually quite proud.”

Jojo Moyes: ‘There’s something about a horse that speaks to my soul’

Jojo says she has had horses on and off since for her whole life.

“I’m a very pragmatic and sensible person, but there’s something about a horse that speaks to my soul,” she said, admitting she was getting tearful during the interview.

“They’ve just been such an important part of my life, they’re like any animal in that you can pour unconditional love into them and you get back something that is uncomplicated. I have to say, with horses, it’s slightly more complicated in that they could also kill you if they tried, unlike a cat or a dog. But I think for me, it was about independence, it was about courage. It was about feeling unafraid.”

Jojo added that she sold Bombardier when she became too busy with exams and work. She felt terrible that she was unable to to trace him afterwards, so she now gives all her animals a home for life.

At the end of the programme, guests are asked for their luxury item and she chose a mechanical horse.

“I would like a life-size mechanical horse so I can spend the hours perfecting my classical dressage seat and hands and legs,” she said.

“That would complete my triumvirate – brain, physicality and community, because I would have somebody to talk to. My horse would be like Tom Hanks and his volleyball [in the film Cast Away], I would give it a name and we would have conversations.

“By the time I got rescued I could join Carl Hester as a dressage Olympian – that’s my aim. Because also I’m not very good if I’m not doing something, so I would have something to work towards.”

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