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‘Horses make me happier than anything else’: novelist Jojo Moyes on dressage, unconditional love, and why she will never sell a horse again

Briony Reed — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 14:30:39 +0000

Bestselling author Jojo Moyes reflects in her own words on her childhood riding in London, being chased by park-keepers, and why horses are her oxygen mask

Judy Harvey was one of my first role models. She had just taken over Lee Valley Riding School in London, where I started riding, when I joined. We’d work 20 hours for one hour’s riding and we thought that was great. I will always be grateful to Judy because she took us all seriously in a way that, given her own talents, she absolutely didn’t need to.

My first horse of my own was Bombardier. At the time there were lots of funny little yards around East London tucked away in side streets. You’d open a garage door and there would be four stables behind it in a small cobbled yard.

A man called Danny had found Bombardier chained to a lamp post, a section C stallion. Danny nursed him back to health, but had no idea what to do with him. And so I sort of took over some of his training.

I would ride in London Fields, which wasn’t well received by the park-keepers. I couldn’t afford a saddle and so rode bareback much of the time. One time, I was lying on Bombardier’s back listening to my Sony Walkman – which felt like the coolest thing – and was then royally bucked off when someone hit a tennis ball at him and he farted off across London Fields, with me – and the park-keeper – giving chase.

I had to sell Bombardier when I had A-levels coming and couldn’t spare the time to work to pay for him. I could never discover what happened to him after that – it broke my heart. No animal has ever left me since; they’re with me for life.

Joey the warmblood’s party trick is to “pick up the broom and start sweeping”. (Image credit: John Willie Hopkins Esq)

Jojo Moyes on competing: “Carl Hester doesn’t have to worry yet”

Now I have Joey, a warmblood. He’s a confidence-giver. He can be a bit complicated but he’s not sharp; he’s never made me think, “I might die now”.

I absolutely love him. He’s a bit like a large dog in that he likes to chew everything. If you’re mucking out, he’ll pick up a broom and start sweeping.

His favorite thing is to stick out his tongue and have you waggle it; he goes into a sort of reverie.

I took up classical dressage about three years ago. We’d moved to London and to a livery yard, and one day the owner barked at me, “Do you know anything about the outside rein?” I’d spent 20 years “hacking and yakking”! So I’ve had to unlearn everything, learn to ride off the outside rein and use my seat properly. I love it – even though it made me cry repeatedly for the first few months.

Joey and I have been out competing a few times and he’s often in the ribbons. We’ve got as far as elementary – Carl Hester doesn’t have to worry just yet!

“I don’t know who I would be without horses – all horse people I’ve ever met are the same, it’s who we are,” says Jojo Moyes. (Image credit: John Willie Hopkins Esq)

“I don’t know who I’d be without horses”

Horses are so important to me because they fulfil so many of our needs in life. You can pour unconditional love into them, and riding is an intellectual challenge – you have to think about what you’re doing. Plus there’s a community and it’s great for you physically. It makes me happier than almost anything else that I do.

I draw something so deep and visceral from the company of horses. I couldn’t even explain it. I just need to be near them, and I don’t know who I would be without them; how I would navigate the world. Every horse person I’ve ever met is the same. It’s who we are.

I really notice the difference in my mood when I ride. I suffered from depression when my mum was dying, my marriage was ending and I’d overworked myself. I would struggle in the mornings, so would go out on my horse or walk the dogs.

And then I went to ride in Portugal for the first time and after a few days realised that I was waking up cheerful. I think it was being allowed to be “a horse-mad 14-year-old girl” with zero responsibilities, a lot of curiosity and room to learn, in an extraordinary landscape with beautiful horses.

It taught me an important lesson, especially in terms of being a woman and feeling like I’m always responsible for everything, which is that it’s vital to have periods when you get to just be an old horse girl. I don’t think it’s selfish; it’s putting your oxygen mask on first.

Jojo Moyes on the parallels between writing and riding

For both writing and riding, I believe, you have to love learning. My favourite thing with both is to lose myself in it to the point when I stop thinking and I’m just in it. You just have to go with it. I love not being in my head, and both riding and writing give me that.

Horses have been the biggest gift in my relationship with my daughter. All through her teens we would ride side-by-side at the weekend, and that was how we talked about stuff.

It taught her the discipline of doing your horse before you do anything else and she’s now this astonishing, hard-working, very capable 28-year-old. I think horse girls carry an air of capability that almost no other sports discipline gives.

I really feel like I had the best relationship with my daughter because of horses. We still ride together; it’s my favourite part of the weekend.

There are some really interesting questions being asked at the moment about our relationship with horses. I think it’s about actually observing what the horses are telling us and working with it rather than subduing them. I hope that we’re moving as a horse society towards something that’s a little more collaborative rather than dominant.

Jojo Moyes’ latest book, We All Live Here, is out now in paperback

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Bestselling author reveals ‘horse obsession’ on Desert Island Discs: ‘I could aim to join Carl Hester as a dressage Olympian’

Pippa Roome — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 15:10:19 +0000

Jojo Moyes, bestselling author of Me Before You, has revealed that she had a “horse obsession” as a child, on a recent episode of Desert Island Discs.

Jojo’s love of horses extended to asking her mother to fill her room with straw and buying a horse without telling her parents – and she even chose an equestrian-themed luxury item on the BBC Radio 4 programme.

The author said that she doesn’t know where her love of horses comes from “because my parents are completely unhorsey people”, but she caught the bug when she was about seven years old.

“I went to the Lee Valley riding school in Walthamstow, which was a council-run equestrian centre set up in the 80s, I think, to give underprivileged kids a taste of a different kind of sport,” she said.

“I used to work 20 hours there mucking out, lifting hay bales, buckets of water, in return for one hour’s riding and I thought that was a great deal.

“I asked my mum if she would fill my room with straw so that I could pretend to be a horse and she did it. I don’t remember much about my childhood, but I do remember that and I also don’t remember being part of clearing it up, so it was pretty game of her to do that.”

Jojo said she knew all the little yards in east London and became friendly with the people who ran them. There was a horse in one who had been found chained to a lamp post.

“A guy had bought him who didn’t know about horses, but had bought him to rescue him, and so he let me pay for Bombardier in instalments. So I had a cleaning job at 14 and I paid off this horse,” she said, adding that she didn’t tell her parents until she had paid the full price.

“They knew that I was helping look after this horse and I said, ‘Oh, by the way, I bought Bombardier’, and there was this silence. And they said, ‘What?’ And I said, ‘I bought him. I bought Bombardier.’ My mother said, ‘Well, you can jolly well go and unbuy him, can’t you? I mean, what are you going to do with a horse?’ And I said, ‘I’m keeping him. You can’t do anything.’

“They said to me afterwards that although they were shocked and slightly appalled, they also thought if my worst rebellion was working to buy the thing that I really wanted and then giving up my lunch money to pay for hay and stuff like that, then I wasn’t doing too badly. They admitted a long time afterwards that they were actually quite proud.”

Jojo Moyes: ‘There’s something about a horse that speaks to my soul’

Jojo says she has had horses on and off since for her whole life.

“I’m a very pragmatic and sensible person, but there’s something about a horse that speaks to my soul,” she said, admitting she was getting tearful during the interview.

“They’ve just been such an important part of my life, they’re like any animal in that you can pour unconditional love into them and you get back something that is uncomplicated. I have to say, with horses, it’s slightly more complicated in that they could also kill you if they tried, unlike a cat or a dog. But I think for me, it was about independence, it was about courage. It was about feeling unafraid.”

Jojo added that she sold Bombardier when she became too busy with exams and work. She felt terrible that she was unable to to trace him afterwards, so she now gives all her animals a home for life.

At the end of the programme, guests are asked for their luxury item and she chose a mechanical horse.

“I would like a life-size mechanical horse so I can spend the hours perfecting my classical dressage seat and hands and legs,” she said.

“That would complete my triumvirate – brain, physicality and community, because I would have somebody to talk to. My horse would be like Tom Hanks and his volleyball [in the film Cast Away], I would give it a name and we would have conversations.

“By the time I got rescued I could join Carl Hester as a dressage Olympian – that’s my aim. Because also I’m not very good if I’m not doing something, so I would have something to work towards.”

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