I Am the Great Horse

‘I’m no Black Beauty’, announces the hero of this horse autobiography. No, indeed he isn’t. He is Bucephalus, perhaps the most famous horse of all time, the stallion who carried Alexander the Great on his megalomaniac imperialist campaign from Macedonia to India, defeating the might of Persia on the way. Alexander is one of only two people who can ride Bucephalus, an Alexander among horses. The other in this story is a girl called Charmeia (always Charm for short) who becomes his groom. There is a ‘horse bond’ between Bucephalus and these two people, a profound telepathic loyalty which can only be broken by death. Charm first came to Macedonia intent on murderous revenge against Alexander’s father, Philip, who had raped and destroyed her mother: she is Alexander’s half-sister, in fact. Revenge is displaced by the tie she forms with Alexander and the horse.

Bucephalus tells their threefold story. As a horse he is wonderfully convincing; not for nothing is the author a former groom in racing stables. Alexander is convincing, too. Seen through the eyes of Bucephalus and his groom, the double nature of Alexander is admirably shown. He is at once the charismatic, gifted, superboy hero, a true military genius, and the ruthless, self-corrupting, visionary egomaniac, glorying in bloodshed. Given that Alexander’s life is one long series of battles and (mostly) victories, Roberts sustains extraordinary tension, variety and surprise as Bucephalus tells their story. This is a wild, surging, enormously readable narrative. On top of his traditional achievements, Bucephalus joins Sewell’s Black Beauty and Richard Adams’s Traveller (the horse of General Robert E Lee) as one of the great equine storytellers. Katherine Roberts has done him proud. Ideal for young teenagers, his story will captivate anyone who loves horses.