Interview: Lucy Higginson, Horse & Hound (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
LUCY Higginson has some news for Tony Blair. He may have pummelled his rebels over Iraq, and strong-armed the unions over health reforms, but he has clearly not reckoned on the challenge ahead from Horse & Hound magazine.
Under the determined new editorship of Higginson, the Tatler of the horse crowd is preparing to scupper a hunting ban any way it can - even if this most conservative of institutions has to condone lawbreaking to make it unworkable.
Higginson, a serious, sensibly dressed 33-year-old, is an unlikely exponent of civil disobedience. The first woman editor in the magazine's 120-year history, she is married to an Eton maths teacher, rides in competitions alongside Zara Phillips, and enthuses like a Jilly Cooper stable girl about being "thrilled to bits" about her "jolly new columnists". But a year into editing this bible of the horsey classes, she has decided that a hunting ban is more than her readers will stand. So she will offer Horse & Hound as the focal point for that disobedience.
"We'll certainly be very understanding when people feel the need to break the law," she says. "I'm very pro-hunting, and we've run articles pointing out to the Government the large number of people who will continue if the worst happens and there's a ban. I really understand that. People just can't respect this law and see it as an infringement of their rights. So if there is civil disobedience, we will report it with an interest in what's going on and let people explain themselves in our letters page."
In her 20th-floor office in IPC's South Bank tower, surrounded by bound copies of the Horse Racing Record, Higginson may not look like the typical nose-ringed activist, but she certainly displays the requisite anger. "It's preposterous the amount of time Westminster has spent on this," she says. "It's simply not the case that hunters enjoy killing, and it's certainly not a very rich man's sport - there are stacks of people doing it because it's all that's going on. I particularly feel angry for a lot of the horses."
Much of Higginson's life revolves around horses. She has a half share in her own, which she rides three times a week, and she hunts regularly, mainly with the Old Berkshire Hunt. "I've had two death threats from someone who uses red ink and calls himself 'Mr D Mented', but it doesn't worry me," she says. "It represents the deranged nature of some of the people you get in the antihunt movement."
As only the magazine's fifth editor, Higginson joined last year from The Field - where else? - with a mission to modernise it without risking its vast social influence. The readers, almost two- thirds women, are wealthy and well-connected, and it is no accident that Hugh Grant's character in Notting Hill pretended to be from Horse & Hound in order to meet Julia Roberts. "Getting your horse's picture in Horse & Hound is the equestrian equivalent of getting photos of your 21st in Harpers & Queen, if that's your bag," she says. "People are ecstatic to be in the magazine, and they beg us to use their pictures. They pore over the tiny type of the results pages, and are mad keen to know who's done well."
She has lifted circulation from 64,000 to around 68,000 in her first year, by bringing in a less fusty design, more features and columns, and even a number of gossip columns. But she is quick to point out that this is not the lust-with-thestablelad sort of gossip. "Our readers look at the horse first, and we're not a great deal interested in personal gossip, anything that's deemed to be prying," she says. She is offended by accusations that the magazine is "plunging downmarket", and insists that there will be "nothing as frothy as horoscopes", as some have speculated.
She has learned that even relatively minor changes - dropping obituaries, for instance - have proved too radical for her readers. After protests, the obituaries have returned. Could the Horse & Hound readership perhaps be a little out of touch with modern Britain? After all, there seem to be only white faces in the photographs. "Well, we have featured riders from the United Arab Emirates," she replies. "But I suppose our readership is Middle England. Yet it's not the stuck-up, exclusive world that people portray. I'm living proof."
Born to "salesman stock", Higginson grew up in suburban Cheshire, discovering horses while at Manchester High School. After her parents refused to pay for ballet lessons, she joined the local pony club with borrowed ponies, and eventually bought two of her own horses through Horse & Hound's classifieds. At 13, she wrote about a gymkhana for the school magazine and instantly decided she wanted to become a sports journalist - ideally the one editing Horse & Hound. Five days after leaving Durham University she joined The Field as a sub-editor; and, after rising to be deputy editor, she finally achieved her goal.
"I always used to read the print off this magazine," she says, "and was the scourge of the pony club quiz night for knowing all the answers."
HIGGINSON has said some harsh things about the Prime Minister: an editorial before the last prohunt march warned "glib, egocentric, image-obsessed Blair" that he will "rue the day" he promised to ban hunting. With the Bill now back in the Lords for its second reading, and a vote expected next month, a ban could be a reality within a year. If the Lords vote against it, the Government will introduce the Bill again in November and use the Parliament Act to force it through.
She will not say if she has signed the Hunting Declaration being forwarded among determined hunters, who promise to risk jail by defying a ban. "I'm going to pass on that one, as I'm hoping I don't need to face that crisis decision yet," she says. But she does see this as an apposite moment to offer the Prime Minister a warning. "It really isn't going to be a walkover to enforce this law," she says. "There's an awful lot of people who care incredibly deeply about this issue. He thinks they'll just go away - but I'm not at all convinced they will."
(Evening Standard, October 1 2003)
LUCY Higginson has some news for Tony Blair. He may have pummelled his rebels over Iraq, and strong-armed the unions over health reforms, but he has clearly not reckoned on the challenge ahead from Horse & Hound magazine.
Under the determined new editorship of Higginson, the Tatler of the horse crowd is preparing to scupper a hunting ban any way it can - even if this most conservative of institutions has to condone lawbreaking to make it unworkable.
Higginson, a serious, sensibly dressed 33-year-old, is an unlikely exponent of civil disobedience. The first woman editor in the magazine's 120-year history, she is married to an Eton maths teacher, rides in competitions alongside Zara Phillips, and enthuses like a Jilly Cooper stable girl about being "thrilled to bits" about her "jolly new columnists". But a year into editing this bible of the horsey classes, she has decided that a hunting ban is more than her readers will stand. So she will offer Horse & Hound as the focal point for that disobedience.
"We'll certainly be very understanding when people feel the need to break the law," she says. "I'm very pro-hunting, and we've run articles pointing out to the Government the large number of people who will continue if the worst happens and there's a ban. I really understand that. People just can't respect this law and see it as an infringement of their rights. So if there is civil disobedience, we will report it with an interest in what's going on and let people explain themselves in our letters page."
In her 20th-floor office in IPC's South Bank tower, surrounded by bound copies of the Horse Racing Record, Higginson may not look like the typical nose-ringed activist, but she certainly displays the requisite anger. "It's preposterous the amount of time Westminster has spent on this," she says. "It's simply not the case that hunters enjoy killing, and it's certainly not a very rich man's sport - there are stacks of people doing it because it's all that's going on. I particularly feel angry for a lot of the horses."
Much of Higginson's life revolves around horses. She has a half share in her own, which she rides three times a week, and she hunts regularly, mainly with the Old Berkshire Hunt. "I've had two death threats from someone who uses red ink and calls himself 'Mr D Mented', but it doesn't worry me," she says. "It represents the deranged nature of some of the people you get in the antihunt movement."
As only the magazine's fifth editor, Higginson joined last year from The Field - where else? - with a mission to modernise it without risking its vast social influence. The readers, almost two- thirds women, are wealthy and well-connected, and it is no accident that Hugh Grant's character in Notting Hill pretended to be from Horse & Hound in order to meet Julia Roberts. "Getting your horse's picture in Horse & Hound is the equestrian equivalent of getting photos of your 21st in Harpers & Queen, if that's your bag," she says. "People are ecstatic to be in the magazine, and they beg us to use their pictures. They pore over the tiny type of the results pages, and are mad keen to know who's done well."
She has lifted circulation from 64,000 to around 68,000 in her first year, by bringing in a less fusty design, more features and columns, and even a number of gossip columns. But she is quick to point out that this is not the lust-with-thestablelad sort of gossip. "Our readers look at the horse first, and we're not a great deal interested in personal gossip, anything that's deemed to be prying," she says. She is offended by accusations that the magazine is "plunging downmarket", and insists that there will be "nothing as frothy as horoscopes", as some have speculated.
She has learned that even relatively minor changes - dropping obituaries, for instance - have proved too radical for her readers. After protests, the obituaries have returned. Could the Horse & Hound readership perhaps be a little out of touch with modern Britain? After all, there seem to be only white faces in the photographs. "Well, we have featured riders from the United Arab Emirates," she replies. "But I suppose our readership is Middle England. Yet it's not the stuck-up, exclusive world that people portray. I'm living proof."
Born to "salesman stock", Higginson grew up in suburban Cheshire, discovering horses while at Manchester High School. After her parents refused to pay for ballet lessons, she joined the local pony club with borrowed ponies, and eventually bought two of her own horses through Horse & Hound's classifieds. At 13, she wrote about a gymkhana for the school magazine and instantly decided she wanted to become a sports journalist - ideally the one editing Horse & Hound. Five days after leaving Durham University she joined The Field as a sub-editor; and, after rising to be deputy editor, she finally achieved her goal.
"I always used to read the print off this magazine," she says, "and was the scourge of the pony club quiz night for knowing all the answers."
HIGGINSON has said some harsh things about the Prime Minister: an editorial before the last prohunt march warned "glib, egocentric, image-obsessed Blair" that he will "rue the day" he promised to ban hunting. With the Bill now back in the Lords for its second reading, and a vote expected next month, a ban could be a reality within a year. If the Lords vote against it, the Government will introduce the Bill again in November and use the Parliament Act to force it through.
She will not say if she has signed the Hunting Declaration being forwarded among determined hunters, who promise to risk jail by defying a ban. "I'm going to pass on that one, as I'm hoping I don't need to face that crisis decision yet," she says. But she does see this as an apposite moment to offer the Prime Minister a warning. "It really isn't going to be a walkover to enforce this law," she says. "There's an awful lot of people who care incredibly deeply about this issue. He thinks they'll just go away - but I'm not at all convinced they will."
(Evening Standard, October 1 2003)
posted by David Rowan at Wednesday, October 01, 2003
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