A classic story which captures the magic of owning a horse and the breathless excitement of racing it. Velvet Brown is horse mad and when she wins a strange piebald horse in a raffle, she knows that he is something special. He has just the bravery that is needed to become a great champion. Could he even win the Grand National, the greatest of all horse races? Velvet is determined to try.
This is a beautifully bound gift edition of this classic tale of a girl and her horse. Velvet Brown is a 14 year old girl living in small coastal village in the 1920s. She dreams of owning and training horses one day. When she and her friend Mi see a piebald horse jump a five foot fence, they decide to follow Velvet's dream to ride in the Grand National. But will Velvet be allowed to ride in the race? And can The Pie really win the most prestigious prize in all of steeplechasing? A horse-racing classic, National Velvet has entertained generations of horse lovers with dreams of riding in races themselves.
Launch titles in the Heritage Collection from Egmont include:
Enid Bagnold (1889-1981) was an author and playwright.
Enid Bagnold began her writing career in August 1913 on a magazine entitled, Modern Society, where she was employed a staff writer.
In 1924 she published the highly acclaimed novel, The Difficulty of Getting Married followed by the commercially successful National Velvet in 1935. National Velvet told the story of a butcher's daughter, Velvet Brown, who wins a horse in a raffle and, disguised as a boy, rides to victory in the Grand National. It was later made into a hugely successful film, with Elizabeth Taylor in the starring role. Her next novel, which she considered to be her best, was The Squire.
Bagnold also wrote a number of plays including Lottie Dundass, The Chalk Garden and a Matter of Gravity.
Enid married Sir Roderick Jones, chairman of Reuters, and had four children. Mostly brought up in Jamaica, she lived in Kent and Sussex, with a spell serving in France as a nurse and driver during World War I.
