Book Review by Norman Fine

The Lady of the Chase, Alastair Jackson, Merlyn Unwin Books (UK), 2018, Hardcover, 208 pp, illustrated, available direct from publisher, book stores, and popular online sources.

Daphne Moore is Alastair Jackson’s Lady of the Chase. Before reading this new book, I knew of Daphne Moore only as an author. Her book, Foxhounds, published in 1981, is an excellent account of the revolt against the ponderous and massively-built English foxhound of the early twentieth century and the development of the lighter, active, and athletic animal we know today as the Modern English foxhound.

I learned a lot about foxhounds in Moore’s book, but I didn’t get to know Daphne Moore in the least. Now, Alastair Jackson’s biography of this fascinating lady has brought her to life for me—her joys (hunting), her problems (finances), her talents (writing and painting), and her sorrows (the loss of the one, brief love in her life to World War II). For any foxhunter with a passion for the hunting field, foxhounds, foxhunting people, and revered names still on our lips today, Jackson’s book will be a delight.