King of the Wind

As part of my preperation for the Breeders Cup (aka the World Thoroughbred Championships which will be held this year at Belmont Park on October 29th) I just listened to the audio version of Marguerite Henry's Newbery Award Winner King of the Wind. It tells the story of the Godolphin Arabian, one of the three founding sires of the Thoroughbred breed. Every racehorse today from Derby winner to claimer can trace their lineage back to at least one of these stallions.

The Godolphin Arabian is the most famous of these because of King of the Wind and because his story is the most vague and therefore the most conducive to creative license. He was born in Yemen in the stables of the Bey of Tunis in 1724. A bloodthirsty sultan looking to improve his reputuation overseas, the Bey gave the stallion to Louis XV, the boy king of France. At this point history gets lost-legend says the stallion was rejected by the king and reduced to Black Beauty like hard times-pulling a water cart through the streets of Paris. A more likely explanation is that he was sold or given to the Duke of Lorraine. History picks up again when the horse was acquired by Edward Coke, who then bequethed his stock to his great friend the Earl of Godolphin. The Earl, seeking to improve the English breed, bred the African import to his finest mares. The results were Lath, Cade and Regulus all racing champions at Newmarket.

From these scant facts Henry wove a great adventure story of the fictional stableboy Agba and his journeys as he followed the sultan's order to "care for the horse in his charge as long as the horse shall live." From the lavish stables of the sultan to the Newgate Jail to the famous Newmarket Racecourse young readers have read along with Sham (as the horse is called in the book) and Agba for sixty plus years in their riches to rags to riches story. Listening as an adult I am again impressed with her beautiful yet spare writing. Judging by the long list of books consulted she obviously did her research and it shows in her vivid descriptions. I am also impressed by the vocabulary-there is no dumbing down. If young readers didn't know what a minaret they would just have to look that up. I appreciated that as a reader then and now.