James Hick

The BHS’s new chief executive discusses the Covid-19 challenge and his passion for heavies with Lucy Elder – and how he’s ended up with a “menagerie”

- Lucy Elder

THERE isn’t a better job in the world, as far as I’m concerned,” so says the British Horse Society’s (BHS) new chief executive.

New is perhaps a little far – he’s been there five months now and has spent four of those driving the length and breadth of the country meeting those who make up the BHS. We meet in virtual reality via video link, partway through the lockdown.

When the BHS first publicised James’ appointment, his background with horses was covered off in a single line: “Mr Hick has been a member of the British Horse Society for over 10 years and in his spare time he breeds and shows shire horses.”

So when did he catch the equestrian bug? “I’d describe myself as a competent leisure rider – and that started when I was little. I was lucky enough to go to Pony Club camp as a kid, I would have been about 10 – I was probably too young to go, but my mum managed to get me in under the radar, as you do,” he says.

“When I was about 12, horses moved out of our lives as a family, but they have always been with me and really the thread that has come through my life growing up was via my grandfather. He grew up on a working farm and he grew up with horses, using horses to work, plough the fields and all the things we used to value them for.

“He would take me to every county show and farm museum, and that is why I became so attached to the heavy horse world.

“About 15 years ago I went to the Suffolk Show and was talking to Linda Chapman, [president] of the Percheron Heavy Horse Society, watching the ridden heavy horse class. I thought, ‘This is fantastic – I could have a heavy horse and I could ride, how much better can that be?’”