The Highland pony was shaped by crofts, hillsides and deer forests, and its build still tells you exactly what it was asked to do. Here is where it came from, how it was recorded and why it matters now.

The Welsh Cob was bred to work hard, travel far and keep going, and the Welsh Pony and Cob Society’s stud book, begun in 1902, is where that story becomes a written record. Here is what the record supports, and what it doesn’t.

The Arab is one of the oldest and most influential horse breeds in the world. We trace where it came from, the work it was bred for, and how the Bedouin, the Blunts and the Thoroughbred shaped it.

The Icelandic horse has lived on its island for more than a thousand years, closed off from every other breed by a law its owners kept. This is how that isolation, and a lot of hard work, made the horse we know.

The smallest of the Welsh breeds grew up on open hill, worked for the people who farmed it, and was shaped by both. Here is how the Section A pony came to be, what we can say for certain, and what we would rather call a myth.

The white horse of the Rhône delta is one of Europe’s oldest-looking breeds, but much of what is said about its origins is myth. Here is what the work, the marsh and the herdsmen actually tell us.

The Irish Draught was never a heavy carthorse. It was the small farm’s all-rounder, and its build and its calm head come straight from that work. Here is where it came from, how close it came to disappearing, and where it stands now in the UK and the US.

The Cleveland Bay is often called England’s oldest established horse breed. We trace it from the packhorses of North Yorkshire to the carriage yard and the edge of extinction, and ask what it means today.

The Lipizzaner began as a court horse on a stony Habsburg stud in what is now Slovenia. It survived Napoleon, two world wars and a border that moved under its feet.

The Clydesdale began as a Lanarkshire farm and cart horse and grew into one of the best known draught breeds in the world. Here is where it came from, the work that shaped it and where it stands today.