Name Harry Horse | ||
Harry horse making of the last polar bears part one
Richard Horne, whose pen name was Harry Horse (9 May 1960, Coventry – c.10 January 2007, Papil, West Burra), was an English author, illustrator and political cartoonist. He was also known as lead singer of the band Swamptrash. Born and raised in Coventry, Warwickshire, he moved to Edinburgh in 1978, where he adopted his pen name.
Contents
- Harry horse making of the last polar bears part one
- Harry Horse Making of The Last Polar Bears Part Two
- Books
- Political cartoons
- Computer game
- Illustrations
- Music
- Death
- References
Harry Horse - Making of "The Last Polar Bears" - Part Two
Books
His first book, Ogopogo, My Journey with the Loch Ness Monster, was published in 1983. He also wrote the The Last... series of books; this included The Last Polar Bears, which was adapted into a 30-minute cartoon for CITV and a touring theatre production for the National Theatre of Scotland, and The Last Castaways, which won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize.
Political cartoons
From 1987 to 1992 Horne was a political cartoonist for Scotland on Sunday and The Scotsman; he also drew until his death in 2007 for the Sunday Herald newspapers. His illustrations also appeared regularly in The Observer and The Independent newspapers.
Computer game
In 1993 he created, designed, and wrote a point-and-click adventure game for Time Warner called Drowned God: Conspiracy of the Ages. The game was based on a forged manuscript he had written a decade earlier, purporting to have been written by 19th-century poet Richard Henry Horne, who shares Horse's name.
Illustrations
His illustrations appeared in books as diverse as The Good Golf Guide to Scotland, a centenary edition of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, two books by Martin C. Strong both published by Canongate Books (The Great Rock Discography, 1st–4th eds. (1994–1998) and The Wee Rock Discography (1996)) and the children's book Magus the Lollipop Man.
Music
In the late eighties he was the singer and frontman of the Edinburgh band Swamptrash, which later evolved, without Horse, into Shooglenifty, which still performs.
Death
On 10 January 2007, Horne's body was discovered holding his wife Mandy, who had been terminally ill with multiple sclerosis, in their bungalow in Papil, West Burra. The The Sunday Times reported on 13 July 2008 that rather than the "Romeo and Juliet" scene described in many articles relating to their deaths, Horse had stabbed her thirty times before killing their pets and stabbing himself until he too bled to death. . Actor Tam Dean Burn, who had in the week before Horse's death put together an aborted radio tribute to him, said in 2009 after speaking with Horse's female relatives that the 2008 report was "a cruel distortion".