Val ffrench Blake
Robert Lifford Valentine "Val" ffrench Blake (3 March 1913-11 March 2011) was an English Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, cattle- and horse breeder, and author.
Biography
Early life
Robert Lifford Valentine ffrench Blake, known as Val, was born on 3 March 1913 in Rawalpindi, India.[1][2][3] He was a descendant of the Tribes of Galway. His father was Major St. John Lucius O'Brien Acheson ffrench Blake (1889-1917), who was killed at the First Battle of Gaza, and his mother, Doris Kathleen Tweedie.[1][2] He went to Eton College, a boarding-school in Eton, Berkshire, where he was an Oppidan Scholar, and graduated from the Royal Military College in Sandhurst, Berkshire.[1][2]
Military career
During the Second World War, he served with the 17th/21st Lancers in India and North Africa.[2] However, after he was shot in the neck and arms by a sniper in November 1942, he was sent back to England to heal.[2] He then worked at RAC Tactical School in Oxford and studied at the Staff College, Camberley.[2] At the age of thirty-two, he was appointed Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster General (AA&QMG) to the 6th Armoured Division.[2] He was then posted to the newly established Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where he served as Chief Instructor of Old College and co-wrote the Military Syllabus for an 18-month course.[2][3] Meanwhile, he became a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order in 1945.[1] However, in 1949, he retired from the British Army as Lieutenant-Colonel.[1][2]
Country life
Later, he moved to a farm in Cornwall, where he raised Ayrshire cattle.[2] After being introduced to dressage by Polish cavalryman Captain Stefan Skupinski, he bred horses to sell them for eventing, showjumping and dressage.[2] He also wrote several books, including: one about dressage, another one about the Crimean War, and a memoir. He taught children how to shoot woodcock, snipe or pheasant.[2] He also became a professional painting restorer, copying Old Master.[2]
In 2010, he asked his publisher to give him the royalties he was overdue from the sales of his 1972 book Dressage for Beginners in the United States.[4]
Personal life
He married Grania Bryde Curran.[1] They had two sons:
They resided at Midgham Park Farm in Woolhampton, Berkshire.[1] He spent his last years in a nursing home in Nether Wallop, Hampshire.[4]
Bibliography
- Dressage for Beginners (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1972).
- The Early Training of the Horse (Seeley, 1978).
- Elementary Dressage (Frederick Warne Publishers, 1984).
- The Crimean War (Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen and Sword Books, 2006).
- Mainstay of the Altos: A Twentieth Century Life (London: Bene Factum Publishing, 2011).
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 The Peerage: Lt.-Col. Robert Lifford Valentine ffrench Blake
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Lt-Col Val ffrench Blake, The Daily Telegraph, 27 March 2011
- 1 2 Lieutenant-Colonel Val ffrench-Blake, The Times, 16 March 2011
- 1 2 Charlotte White, 97-year-old equestrian author’s fight for book royalties, Horse & Hound, 6 July 2010