Peter Grey

Peter Grey was born in London in 1918 and was a journalist who worked as a London and European correspondent for various agencies and papers. Grey was fiction editor for Hulton Press and a features editor and director of Buckingham Press Ltd. and editor of Reader's Review. Grey contributed to all the major London magazine publishers, including Hulton Press, Newnes and the Amalgamated Press as well as numerous magazines and newspapers overseas.

Grey was fiction editor for Girl in the early 1950s, contibuting a number of stories himself, including the serial 'The Caravan Secret' (1951) and the Sally Lester series of complete stories (1952-54). He also contributed a story to Swift Annual 1 (1954) and, probably, Girl Annual.

In 1959-61, Grey wrote the popular Kit Hunter, show jumper series of novels published by World Distributors. In the first novel, the orphaned Kit travelled to the moorland home of Colonel Hamden, a friend of Kit's widowed mother, only to find that Hamden is in financial difficulties. Kit exposes the Colonel's shrewish secretary as the culprit trying to ruin him and uses her skill as a horsewoman to ride a crossbred pony -- called The Wild One -- to victory in various showjumping events and restore the Colonel's fortune.

Over the remainder of the series, Kit and her friend Mary Trent were to win against the odds in events around the world as she tours Europe, Australia, South America and elsewhere to enter showjumping contests. A very good summary of the series, including cover scans, can be found at the Kit Hunter page of the Vintage Series Books for Girls website.

The first two novels were reprinted in Girl in 1959, illustrated by Harry Lindfield. Grey also wrote three more short serials, 'Trapped', 'The Trail of the Serpent' and 'Flight Into Danger', in 1961.

At the time he was writing these yarns, Grey was living in Highgate, North London. What became of him I've no idea. His short serial 'Trapped!' was reprinted in Mystery Stories for Girls (Hamlyn, 1974).

Novels
Kit Hunter Show Jumper (series):
__The Wild One. Manchester, World Distributors, 1959.
__South American Mission. Manchester, World Distributors, 1959.
__Rival Riders. Manchester, World Distributors, 1959.
__Bush Adventure. Manchester, World Distributors, 1959.
__The Mystery of the Mine. Manchester, World Distributors, 1960.
__Moor Grange Mystery. Manchester, World Distributors, 1960.
__Fiesta for Wild One. Manchester, World Distributors, 1960
__The Phantom Horse. Manchester, World Distributors, 1960.
__Little Outlaw. Manchester, World Distributors, 1961.
__The Last Hurdle. Manchester, World Distributors, 1961.
__Royal Command. Manchester, World Distributors, 1961.
__The Homing Trail. Manchester, World Distributors, 1961.

Others
? The Sun is Silent. Stories by Rima Alamuddin; with an introduction by Peter Grey. London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1964.
True Adventure Stories of the Air, ed. Peter Grey. Bancroft, 1968.
True Adventure Stories of the Sea, ed. Peter Grey. Bancroft, 1968.
True Adventure Stories of the Wild West, ed. Peter Grey. Bancroft, 1968.
True Adventure Stories on Land, ed. Peter Grey. Bancroft, 1968.