K. M. Peyton (1929–2023)
Author of Flambards
About the Author
Image credit: from kmpeyton.co.uk
Series
Works by K. M. Peyton
Big Book Of Girl's Stories 1 copy
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Peyton, Kathleen Wendy Herald
- Other names
- Herald, Kathleen (birth name)
- Birthdate
- 1929-08-16
- Date of death
- 2023-12-19
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Manchester Art College
- Occupations
- novelist
children's book author
pony book author
young adult writer - Awards and honors
- Order of the British Empire (Member, 2014)
- Short biography
- K.M. Peyton, born in Birmingham, England, says she began writing at the age of 9. She was first published at 15 under her maiden name of Kathleen Herald. She says she "'never decided to become a writer...[she]...just was one." She grew up in London obsessed with horses: her early books are about girls who have ponies. In 1950, she married a fellow art student, Mike Peyton -- the M. in her pen name is in his honor -- and travelled with him around Europe.
She completed a teaching diploma on their return to the UK, but turned to writing full-time after a few years. One of her first books was Flambards (1967), which became the opener of a much-loved quartet. In 1979, the Flambards series was adapted into a 13-part TV series by Yorkshire Television. She has written more than 70 books in her career and received numerous top literary awards. She was appointed an MBE in 2014. - Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- Birmingham, West Midlands, England, UK
- Places of residence
- London, Middlesex, England, UK
- Map Location
- England, UK
Members
Discussions
Found: I can’t find this old book in Name that Book (March 23)
KM Peyton and Flambards in Tattered but still lovely (February 2014)
Reviews
At 12, Tessa is "excluded" - essentially, expelled - from her third boarding school. Unable to find anywhere else for her to go, her (despised, rich and unfeeling) stepfather foists her on some of his tenants who train and race horses. Tessa is determined to be sacked as fast as she can, until she is given responsibility for looking after the ungainly horse Buffoon. Buffoon heritage has sentimental value for Tessa and she forms the unlikely dream of seeing Buffoon succeed. Blind Beauty is show more follows Tessa as she grows up and endeavours to pursue her dream, despite the odds against her.
This is very much about the underdog. Tessa's a bit of a teenage delinquent, working for a poor stable in an industry where most jockeys are men and she has pinned her hopes on the 'underhorse'. There's always something inspiring about seeing someone overcome seeming-insurmountable obstacles (even if they are fictional), and I especially like how Tessa is a drop-out and teenage delinquent who is nevertheless able to inspire others. She's smart, and although she relates to horses much better than humans, she wins the friendship and respect of others who want to help her. I also enjoyed Blind Beauty's vivid portrayal of the particular section the horse-racing world it is concerned with.
It's a fantastic story and been my favourite by K.M. Peyton for years. show less
This is very much about the underdog. Tessa's a bit of a teenage delinquent, working for a poor stable in an industry where most jockeys are men and she has pinned her hopes on the 'underhorse'. There's always something inspiring about seeing someone overcome seeming-insurmountable obstacles (even if they are fictional), and I especially like how Tessa is a drop-out and teenage delinquent who is nevertheless able to inspire others. She's smart, and although she relates to horses much better than humans, she wins the friendship and respect of others who want to help her. I also enjoyed Blind Beauty's vivid portrayal of the particular section the horse-racing world it is concerned with.
It's a fantastic story and been my favourite by K.M. Peyton for years. show less
This book completely shocked me, and I can see why so many fans of Flambards hate it. I wanted to throw it across the room several times. But it rewards reading and thinking about it, and why Peyton wrote it, and why people hate it so much.
Basically, Peyton ended the trilogy with Christina's story wrapped up like a chocolate box, she's got Flambards, she's got Dick (sweet, loyal, loving Dick, who has always cared for her since he first met her) and everyone gets to ride off into the sunset. show more And then ten years later she came back and wrote what I can only describe as the anti-fix-it fic, painfully deconstructing all the reasons her happy ending would never work with her actual characters, and heaping misery upon misery to Dick/Christina until they tear each other apart.
And the two big things that drive all of this are Class, and Mark. If, like me, you are very unimpressed by both of them, you will hate watching them take down Dick and Chrstina's happy ever after.
Class! Dick wanted Christina. But he didn't actually want to be master of Flambards. The servants hate him for being just another servant, raised above his station. All the social life of the gentry is closed to him, no-one invites him and Christina around for dinner because they disapprove of the marriage. People gossip, people tut, Dick wants to give Christina everything but is like a fish out of water trying to live in the world she lives in. And not only with class, she has travelled and been independant and adventurous, and Dick's imaginings of what his wife will be and what she will do make a box too small for Christina to fit in.
Mark! Uncle Russell in book 1 is 100% the bad guy. He's cruel, irrational, self obsessed, makes Will so unhappy he cripples himself, sells Sweetbriar to the hounds, burns Will's books on aeroplanes... we all hate Uncle Russell. And Mark is drawn as the chip off the old block, shallow, obsessed with hunting, casually cruel and able to trample over other people's feelings without even noticing. So the fact that the series gets rewritten to 'Christina finally realises it was Mark she has loved all along' is just... really jarring. Readers who have loved Will and loved Dick, and seen Mark be unbearably cruel to them and their families (he is literally the reason Christina loses the baby!) will not enjoy their heroine messing everything up with Dick and falling head over heels in love with Mark.
But does it make sense? Peyton is a skilled author and an excellent observer of people, and her cynical 'Dick cannot make Christina happy' is miserable but does ring true. Mark is as much a product of Uncle Russell's torture as the rest of them are. And Christina and Mark are cut from the same cloth, their love of adventure, hard riding, fast cars and parties. And there is something in Mark, that spark of 'if you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two imposters just the same'...
Ugh, I don't know. I think I preferred the end of book 3 to the end of book 4. But book 4 really made me think! show less
And the two big things that drive all of this are Class, and Mark. If, like me, you are very unimpressed by both of them, you will hate watching them take down Dick and Chrstina's happy ever after.
Class! Dick wanted Christina. But he didn't actually want to be master of Flambards. The servants hate him for being just another servant, raised above his station. All the social life of the gentry is closed to him, no-one invites him and Christina around for dinner because they disapprove of the marriage. People gossip, people tut, Dick wants to give Christina everything but is like a fish out of water trying to live in the world she lives in. And not only with class, she has travelled and been independant and adventurous, and Dick's imaginings of what his wife will be and what she will do make a box too small for Christina to fit in.
Mark! Uncle Russell in book 1 is 100% the bad guy. He's cruel, irrational, self obsessed, makes Will so unhappy he cripples himself, sells Sweetbriar to the hounds, burns Will's books on aeroplanes... we all hate Uncle Russell. And Mark is drawn as the chip off the old block, shallow, obsessed with hunting, casually cruel and able to trample over other people's feelings without even noticing. So the fact that the series gets rewritten to 'Christina finally realises it was Mark she has loved all along' is just... really jarring. Readers who have loved Will and loved Dick, and seen Mark be unbearably cruel to them and their families (he is literally the reason Christina loses the baby!) will not enjoy their heroine messing everything up with Dick and falling head over heels in love with Mark.
But does it make sense? Peyton is a skilled author and an excellent observer of people, and her cynical 'Dick cannot make Christina happy' is miserable but does ring true. Mark is as much a product of Uncle Russell's torture as the rest of them are. And Christina and Mark are cut from the same cloth, their love of adventure, hard riding, fast cars and parties. And there is something in Mark, that spark of 'if you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two imposters just the same'...
Ugh, I don't know. I think I preferred the end of book 3 to the end of book 4. But book 4 really made me think!
In a way I'm glad I read one of Peyton's books right at the start of my pony book discovery for she's by far the best author I've read in the genre and now I can focus on her back catalogue. Then again, it does set an impossible standard for all the authors I have yet to discover.
Fly-By-Night is special - in many pony books where the heroine starts pony-less, the journey is about winning a competition or earning a place at an equestrian school. Here, 90% of the book is about Ruth wanting to show more have a pony, going through the long, expensive and frustrating process of acquiring and taming one and having to deal with the consequences of having her dream fulfilled.
It's an incredible story because it's so much about the huge gap that can exist sometimes between wanting something so bad you'd rather die than be without and coping with not being especially good at it in the end but carrying on valiantly partly out of shame and partly out of loyalty to your old self. Rare are those books that take a look at this uneasy side of life and I was very impressed with Peyton's handling of that particular topic. One of the characters explores the opposite dynamic in that he's good at something he doesn't want to pursue, which is another interesting situation and really allows for good descriptions of the dichotomy between inclination and ability.
The background is that of relative poverty where worrying about money is a daily occurrence - the main consequence of that is an above-average resilient heroine and a realistic time frame during which tiny things can finally happen after loads of saving up and making do.
There's lots of excellent pony content and the characters are varied - the adults all have their own personality (I was even surprised by something happening to one of them, away from family clichés), the horses have different lives and adventures and their owners sometimes deserve them and sometimes not. I really liked this element of surprise in Peyton's book - she doesn't follow specific guidelines and it gives a very free, floating atmosphere to her books where good people sometimes end up in unfair situations while unkind characters get more than they deserve.
Very engrossing book and different from anything I've read in the genre - I thoroughly recommend it. show less
Fly-By-Night is special - in many pony books where the heroine starts pony-less, the journey is about winning a competition or earning a place at an equestrian school. Here, 90% of the book is about Ruth wanting to show more have a pony, going through the long, expensive and frustrating process of acquiring and taming one and having to deal with the consequences of having her dream fulfilled.
It's an incredible story because it's so much about the huge gap that can exist sometimes between wanting something so bad you'd rather die than be without and coping with not being especially good at it in the end but carrying on valiantly partly out of shame and partly out of loyalty to your old self. Rare are those books that take a look at this uneasy side of life and I was very impressed with Peyton's handling of that particular topic. One of the characters explores the opposite dynamic in that he's good at something he doesn't want to pursue, which is another interesting situation and really allows for good descriptions of the dichotomy between inclination and ability.
The background is that of relative poverty where worrying about money is a daily occurrence - the main consequence of that is an above-average resilient heroine and a realistic time frame during which tiny things can finally happen after loads of saving up and making do.
There's lots of excellent pony content and the characters are varied - the adults all have their own personality (I was even surprised by something happening to one of them, away from family clichés), the horses have different lives and adventures and their owners sometimes deserve them and sometimes not. I really liked this element of surprise in Peyton's book - she doesn't follow specific guidelines and it gives a very free, floating atmosphere to her books where good people sometimes end up in unfair situations while unkind characters get more than they deserve.
Very engrossing book and different from anything I've read in the genre - I thoroughly recommend it. show less
Again with Flambards books that swerve and swerve hard and catch you out with the change in mood!
The last book ended with Will and Christina married and riding off into the sunset (if with the ominous overtones of war everywhere). Never one to pull their punches, Peyton doesn't give us even a glimpse of their married life, but opens this book with Will dead, Mark missing in action, and Flambards even more decayed and run down than usual. The widowed Christina has to work out what to do with show more her life, which turns out to be a surprising mix ofbuilding up a found / chosen family, by having Will's baby, buying Mark's bastard son off Violet, and finally confessing her love to Dick.
Then drama ensues by Mark turning out not to be dead after all and actually being the heir to Flambards, and Violet's son decides that rather than be kicked out to the farm he'll burn the farm down, but with a little storybook magic it is all wrapped up in a bow, Dick and Christina get Flambards and the children, and Mark rides off into the sunset with his rich new fiance Dorothy who has promised him a much nicer house with much better hunting somewhere else.
War and grief, and love, and what we need and what we can have, and social class, and how we treat prisoners of war, and how our early teenage years shape us forever, this book is definitely more of the Flambards magic. show less
The last book ended with Will and Christina married and riding off into the sunset (if with the ominous overtones of war everywhere). Never one to pull their punches, Peyton doesn't give us even a glimpse of their married life, but opens this book with Will dead, Mark missing in action, and Flambards even more decayed and run down than usual. The widowed Christina has to work out what to do with show more her life, which turns out to be a surprising mix of
Then drama ensues by Mark turning out not to be dead after all and actually being the heir to Flambards, and Violet's son decides that rather than be kicked out to the farm he'll burn the farm down, but with a little storybook magic it is all wrapped up in a bow, Dick and Christina get Flambards and the children, and Mark rides off into the sunset with his rich new fiance Dorothy who has promised him a much nicer house with much better hunting somewhere else.
War and grief, and love, and what we need and what we can have, and social class, and how we treat prisoners of war, and how our early teenage years shape us forever, this book is definitely more of the Flambards magic. show less
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Awards
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Statistics
- Works
- 82
- Also by
- 10
- Members
- 3,378
- Popularity
- #7,544
- Rating
- 4.0
- Reviews
- 79
- ISBNs
- 375
- Languages
- 8
- Favorited
- 9