Tom Burberry, a horse and an artist: A Barry Shurlock feature
IT'S EASY to forget that the horse was hugely important to many people well into the last century. In his 70's, the clothing pioneer and entrepreneur Thomas Burberry – known to his friends as 'Old Tom'– rode every day between his business in Basingstoke and his home in Hook. He only stopped after a serious fall. Horses were second nature to him: he had grown up on a family farm near Dorking in Surrey. His namesake father was steward to the Duke of Norfolk. In his early years in Basingstoke, he lived in a house call The Mount, in Bounty Road (now the Conservative Club), a substantial...