Chewing the Cud

Babe: The Gallant Pig
Harry's Mad
Martin's Mice
Ace: The Very Important Pig
The Invisible Dog
Three Terrible Trins
Harriet's Hare
The Stray
A Mouse Called Wolf
Mr. Ape
The Water Horse
Charlie Muffin's Miracle Mouse
The Merman
Mysterious Miss Slade
Funny Frank

For older readers

The Roundhill
Spider Sparrow

For Myrle

What's in a Name?

Chapter 1:   
The Sheep-Pig

Chapter 2:   
Farmhand

Chapter 3:   
Myrle and the War

Chapter 4:   
A Home of Our Own

Chapter 5:   
Woodlands Farm

Chapter 6:   
Cows

Chapter 7:   
Pigs

Chapter 8:   
Grandmothers and Grandfathers

Chapter 9:   
Foxes and Badgers

Chapter 10:   
Dogs

Chapter 11:   
Pleasure and Pursuits

Chapter 12:   
Goats, Children, and Ducks

Chapter 13:   
A Farmer No More

Chapter 14:   
A Little TV, a Lot of Books

C
hildren often ask me if the name under which I write is my real one. I say “Yes,” but it's not strictly true. Though everybody calls me “Dick,” my real name, I must confess, is Gordon, and when I was small, everyone called me that. Indeed, my grandparents always did.

I hated the name.

I was christened Ronald Gordon, the first name after Father, the second after some South African who had been a pal of his in the Great War and became one of my two godfathers. I never met the man, never heard from
him, and from an early age, disliked his name. My other godfather, Ivor Nicholson, a publisher, always sent me a ten-pound note on my birthday, so I should probably have been quite happy to be named “Ivor.”

I don't know quite why I took against the name Gordon so much. There is, I suppose, nothing much wrong with it (apologies to any so called who are reading this), but I just plain didn't like it, and when I went to prep school, I managed quickly to acquire the nickname of Bertie. How? Why? Don't know. But at some point when I was quite small, I was walking down the lane from our house with my nanny, Ethel, and I fell and grazed my knee. The story goes that in order for my nanny not to see my tears, I pointed up into the sky and said, “Look at the dicky birds!” After that, Mother and Father used on occasion to call me “Dicky bird,” which then shrank to “Dicky,” and eventually to plain “Dick.” Put together with “King” and “Smith,” a trio of ugly sounds results, but I've got used to it over the years, though I suppose it would have been nice to have, as an author, a really mellifluous name that tripped off the tongue, like David Dearlove or Oliver Grandfield.

Children who write to me often have difficulty with the hyphen between the two parts of my surname and almost always address me as Dick-King-Smith just to be on the
safe side. Once I even had a letter beginning “Dear-Dick-King-Smith.”

My surname was the result of various Kings marrying various Smiths, or indeed Smiths marrying Kings. By chance also, an exploration of my family tree undertaken by my great-uncle Oswald, a keen amateur genealogist, led back to another King, none other than Charles II. Quite possibly most people in England are related to King Charles II, “the Black Boy,” a libertine of the first order who fathered so many children on the wrong side of the blanket. I am descended from a Lady Russell, who bore the king a daughter. This line then descended for a while on the distaff side until eventually one of my female ancestors married a Mr. King (or Smith, not sure which).

Great-uncle Oswald, incidentally, was so shocked by the discovery of the original bastardy that he went into a decline and passed away.

Charles II's genes must have been pretty strong. For almost a couple of centuries after his death there is a story in the family that another ancestor of mine, John James Smith, immigrated to the USA and, in New York state, founded the Mormons. He was eventually murdered, but not before he had married no less than thirty-three wives.