Despite some 30 seasons passing, I remember the day with crystal clarity. Hounds met at Lowesby, the grassy heart of the Quorn Friday country. The bitch pack looked their usual lithe selves; Richard Mould, the grand old pack’s kennel-huntsman, did likewise. I sidled up to my friend, who was mounted on a butty horse, his eyes forever on his hounds. “All well?” I asked. “Morning Arthur,” he replied you tend to get called Arthur by people of a certain vintage if your surname is Negus “I hope this horse of yours jumps,” he muttered out of the side of his mouth, patting the bay mare’s neck. I had sold the horse to the hunt in the autumn. “The Prince is out,” he added with a knowing look. Tighten your girth HRH The Prince of Wales, as King Charles III was then, had a Jorrocksian adoration of the chase. While more readily seen in the hunt countries of the Cotswold packs, the Prince enjoyed an annual pilgrimage to the Shires. When the ‘Prince is out’, you knew it wa