What with trouble at home between his parents, and trouble with a bully at the Tyneside shipyard where he works, life is pretty bleak for fifteen-year-old Joe Darling. Then an unlikely friendship with an old rag-and-bone man, Mr Prodhurst, leads him into the greatest challenge of his life. For Mr Prodhurst bequeaths his peculiar-looking horse, The Gladiator, to Joe – with only enough money for the first few weeks’ feed! How can Joe possibly look after the horse properly? He is determined to try. For otherwise, The Gladiator will have to be put down…
Author
Catherine Cookson was born in Tyne Dock, the illegitimate daughter of a poverty-stricken woman, Kate, who Catherine believed was her older sister. Catherine began work in service but eventually moved south to Hastings, where she met and married Tom Cookson, a local grammar-school master. Although she was originally acclaimed as a regional writer - her novel The Round Tower won the Winifred Holtby Award for the best regional novel of 1968 - her readership quickly spread throughout the world, and her many best-selling novels established her as one of the most popular contemporary woman novelist. She received an OBE in 1985, was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1993, and was appointed an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford, in 1997. For many years she lived near Newcastle upon Tyne.
