Henrietta Knight: 'I used to make my own form book instead of doing homework'

While Irish and British pointing has changed in many ways, with a greater emphasis on welfare, safety and commercialisation which is vital to present-day owners, breeders and trainers, it remains a broad spectrum open to all who have predominated right from the start.

When I was a child in the late 1950s and early 1960s the highlight of any weekend was to be taken to a local point-to-point, be it Larkhill, Tweseldown, Crowell in Oxfordshire or the midweek meeting of the Heythrop Hunt at Fox Farm, Stow-on-the-Wold.

My pocket money was saved so I could have small bets on the horses I fancied, but I liked to see them when they walked around the paddock in order to form my own opinions, even in those days, as to whether they looked fit enough to win. There was no internet or mobile phones, but I made my own form book from earlier results taken from the Horse & Hound. It was handwritten and I would spend hours sifting through the horses rather than doing my school homework.