Book Reviews
'Going Home' and 'In Full Cry'
both by Jim Meads
ISBN numbers: 9781846890413 and 1904057268
on sale together at £40 from Quiller Publishing Ltd
Jim Meads never ceases to amaze me. He is now getting on for eighty years old and appears to be just about as fit as he ever was. He has earned his living photographing (on his feet) hunts, hounds, horses and people for more than fifty years and his work is legendary. He surprises everybody by the way he seems to manage to be in the right place at the right time and these two books are clear evidence of that ability. Nobody produces hunting photographs quite like he does.
When he first began photographing hounds and hunts after completing his National Service in 1950, he usually arrived at the meet on a motorcycle before taking to his usual form of transport – his two feet. His work became well known in Horse and Hound and The Field and he sometimes visited up to three hunts in a day. Later, he broadened his field by including game shooting and was commissioned to prepare a weekly column in Shooting Times. This was not only illustrated with his photographic work, but he also wrote the accompanying words!
'In Full Cry' jacket
Jim’s early work is in black and white and his book, published in 1979, called They Still Meet at Eleven is now a collector’s item. He began taking colour pictures around the late 1980s when the magazines he worked for started publishing in colour. During the intervening period he necessarily had to carry two cameras on a metal bar, one taking black and white and the other colour pictures. This entailed pressing the two shutter releases at the same time! Since then all his pictures have been in colour, as have his recent books.
In more recent years Jim has worked extensively in the hunting scene of the United States and Canada, where his reputation is as high as it is in this country. This became particularly important when, during the Foot and Mouth epidemic at the beginning of this decade, his work in the U.K. completely dried up.
In Full Cry was originally published in 2003 and, in addition to pictures of the previous decade or so, also contains some older colour photographs, including the oldest one in Jim’s collection, taken of Lt Col Sir Peter Farquhar and his Portman Hounds on Okeford Hill in 1957. The book has forewords written by Baroness Mallalieu, President of the Countryside Alliance and by Daphne Flowers Wood MFH, the first ever Lady President of the American MFHA and over 330 colour photographs.
'Going Home' jacket
Going Home was published before the end of 2008 and represents a further superb collection of hunting photographs of hunts, Masters, huntsmen and characters of the hunting field in recent years. The book contains over three hundred and fifty photographs, of which many are of people, packs and hunting countries in the United States and Canada. The forewords are by HRH Prince Charles and Mason H. Lampton MFH, the President of the American MFHA 2005-2008 and, again, over 330 colour photographs.
Both these books are beautifully produced and, bought as a pair, they represent very good value. They should be on the shelves of every hunting person and will bring back many happy memories. There are a few pictures of hare-hunting and mink- hunting packs in both books and I wish there could have been space for more - but perhaps I am showing a personal bias in saying so.
These are said to be his two last books and illustrate the years towards the end of a long and distinguished career. I have little doubt that, before very long, these too will themselves become collector’s items.
Reviewed by:
David Hindle