ISBN 1590481798

Gaucho Laird, Jean Cunninghame Graham - There once rode a man whose life could not be compared to ordinary mortals. This gentleman roamed the world, saddled every breed of horse, lived through a hundred adventures, went to prison to defend his beliefs and wrote like an angel.

They called him Don Roberto Cunninghame Graham and the world was a sadder place for having lost sight of his great soul.

Yet how do you encapsulate such a gigantic existence onto the cramped pages of a single book? And who could possibly understand the life and times of a mounted literary legend?

This stunning new biography is the answer to both questions, for the book has been written by the person who learned first hand from the Gaucho Laird himself.

Horses of the Conquest, Robert Cunninghame Graham - In this modern-day era, with its inherent safeties and pasteurised heroes, how difficult it is to relate to the bold men and their brave horses who came to the New World.

Much has been written about those Europeans known as the Conquistadors.

Beginning with Columbus in the late 15th century, Iberian horses accompanied their riders across turbulent seas, over miles of mountain trails, through steaming jungles, and into cities of golden splendour. These saddle-borne conquerors were quick to admit that, after God, they owed their good fortune to their horses.

Many books have recorded or reviled the Conquistadors.

No book ever equalled this equine account of the horses that helped them make history.

The author, Don Roberto Cunninghame Graham, was uniquely qualified to pen such an important equestrian tale. Born in 1852 to a aristocratic Scottish family, Cunninghame Graham spent his youth working as a gaucho in Argentina, before becoming an outspoken Member of Parliament in London. A lifelong horseman, Don Roberto was also one of the first European writers to defend the rights of native peoples.

Mogreb-El-Acksa, Robert Cunninghame Graham - What rare spark motivates a man to do the impossible – again and again?  What manner of man destroys the boundaries of the word “unobtainable” and replaces it with the words “why not”?  Meet Robert Cunninghame Graham, the author of this book and a living legend of the late 19th century.

Disillusioned with politics, the famous horseman sought solace in the saddle.  His mission?

To journey across Morocco in 1897 by riding through the Atlas mountains and reaching the city of Taroudant

Of course there was one small problem.

The Sultan had forbidden outsiders, especially Christians, from going there.

Don Roberto flouted the danger, saddled his Barb horse and galloped straight into the teeth of one of the greatest desert stories ever told. Disguised in local clothes and calling himself “Sheikh Mohammad El Fasi,” the Scottish author posing as a Turkish doctor was only hours away from the elusive city when he was captured and kidnapped.

Rodeo, Robert Cunninghame Graham - “Rodeo” is an omnibus of the finest work of the man they called “the uncrowned King of Scotland.” The stories canter across a wide vista, ranging from the rolling pampas of Argentina to the cruel cities of Europe. They are inhabited by the characters whom Don Roberto knew, ranging from mysterious Moroccan sherifs to dying Sioux chiefs.

As if to add a hint of equestrian history, “Rodeo” was edited by Aimé Tschiffely, the most famous Long Rider of the 20th century and a close personal friend of Don Roberto’s.

H.G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, Teddy Roosevelt, Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, all praised Don Roberto as being one of the greatest writers of their day.

Tales of Horsemen, Robert Cunninghame Graham - Here is a book of horse stories to discover, buy and cherish. For these tales were penned by the great “Don Roberto” Cunninghame Graham and they are not to be picked up and looked at lightly. For equestrian treasures such as these are rare indeed.

Don Roberto was always a horseman !

He stepped into the saddle as a small child and was riding until he died in 1936.

“Tales of Horsemen” contains ten of the most beautifully written equestrian stories ever set to paper, collected during the roaming life of this talented horse-borne scribe.

The stories gallop across the whole wide world, taking the reader on a ride from the hot pampas of Argentina to the cold reaches of Iceland. The book culminates with Don Roberto’s most famous equestrian tale, “Tschiffely’s Ride.” This account of the Swiss Long Rider, and his Criollo horses Mancha and Gato, helped inspire the birth of modern equestrian travel and earned Don Roberto a place in the Valhalla of Long Rider heroes.

ISBN 1590481801

Here is a tale of remarkable drama and supreme sacrifice, a story discovered by one of the world’s greatest writers deep in the jungles of South America.

Cunninghame Graham, a lifelong champion of the down-trodden, dedicated his literary genius to telling the forgotten story of the Guarani natives, a people converted to Christianity and then betrayed into slavery.

By the mid-1700s European Jesuit priests had converted an estimated one hundred thousand Guarani natives and used their labour to organize a vast theological empire within the borders of Portuguese Brazil. These immense Jesuit-controlled estates raised enormous herds of animals and produced valuable crops which were exported back to Europe, while maintaining schools and churches which taught arts and theology to the natives. After nearly two hundred years of mutual effort, the Guarani and Jesuits had achieved what was described as a ‘golden era’ of peace and progress.

Yet this same wealth, brought about by peaceful means, inspired the envy and resentment of the secular Europeans living in the surrounding countryside. In what would today be described as an act of ethnic cleansing, the Guarani natives were attacked by Spanish and Portuguese troops. Thousands of natives were enslaved, the missions destroyed and the Jesuits driven out.

This is the profound story of those innocents massacred in the name of political domination, written by a master-story teller, which inspired the movie “The Mission.”

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