Monday, February 8, 2010

Elspeth Graham at the IHR

On Wednesday 10 February 2010 Elspeth Graham will be giving a paper entitled "Horses falling, horses flying: a seventeenth-century royalist's management of death and defeat" to the
Psychoanalysis and History seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, London. The seminar takes place in the Low Countries room and starts at 5.30pm.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

First World War horse photos

These are some horse related photos from my collection of First World War photos. Click on the thumbnails to see bigger versions.

Man and girl on horses

Soldier and girl on horses. I think the man is probably a British or South African officer but I haven't positively identified the uniform. This was taken in Windhoek in what is now Namibia, but was then German South West Africa. I assume it was taken some time after the South African invasion in 1915. The horses are a similar size and appear to have identical tack, so I'd guess that the girl has borrowed an army horse to pose for the photo. The message on the back reads: ""With fondest love from Jane".

Mounted Officer

Mounted British Army officer. The insignia on his cuffs are too blurred to be certain but he's probably a Lieutenant. Bought from the collection of Major Disney, who served in 1/5th Lincolnshire Regiment (the battalion that my great-grandad was in). I don't know when or where it was taken. There's also draught horse and cart in the background.

Frisky Horse

Soldier leading a very frisky horse! His uniform looks like First World War period, and the seller said it was from an album marked "Mytchett", which is in Surrey and surrounded by army camps. Apart from that I know nothing about it.

Artillery Group

A group of Royal Field Artillery men, with a draught horse casually grazing in the background on the left. During the First World War the artillery mostly relied on horse drawn transport. Only the biggest, heaviest guns used steam or diesel tractors. The Army Remount Service bought horses from all over the world. In 1918 the British Army had over 1 million animals (of various species, but mostly horses) in service.