'That golden thread, and a zest for life'

In the latest of his series about great huntsmen he knew personally, Alastair Jackson remembers Tim Langley, who spent 30 years at the Berkeley

TIM LANGLEY was a top-class professional huntsman who served the Berkeley for 30 Years and was held in great esteem, both in his own country and throughout the land. I was privileged to have been able to watch him hunting the Berkeley hounds with such skill when I was an agricultural student.

Many years later, and some 40 years ago now, following his retirement, I went to see him and his wife Alison in their cottage at Berkeley to ask him about his career.

Remembering the pre-war days when he started, he said a huntsman only had to please his master and the whipper-in had to please his huntsman.

He emphasised how the role of the post-war professional huntsman changed.

"These days you have to please a lot of people," he told me. "A smile and a word for everyone. We are, after all, in the business of entertainment." Langley had no hunting background and was brought up in Cheapside, a village near Ascot. He said he remembered the moment he vowed to be a huntsman one day. It was a winter's evening when the Garth hounds passed by on their way home from hunting. The huntsman, Wyndham Daniels, winked as he rode by and called a cheery, "Goodnight, boy." He knew then it was what he wanted to do.

STARTING YOUNG

AT 14, Tim left school to work full-time at the local riding school in return for what he learnt. In 1936, he successfully answered an advert in Horse & Hound for a second horseman with the Enfield Chase.

“Call the huntsman ‘Sir’,” he was advised on his first day, but he need not have worried. Ted Cox hardly spoke to him all the time he was there and then it was only to curse him for some misdemeanour.