3 Review(s)

In 1930 wealthy Scottish socialite Dorothy Brooke (1883-1955) followed her new husband to Cairo, Egypt, where she discovered thousands of malnourished and suffering former British war horses leading lives of backbreaking toil and misery. Brought to the Middle East by British forces during the Great War, these ex-cavalry horses had been left behind at the war's end, abandoned like used equipment too costly to be sent home. In Dorothy Brooke and the Fight to Save Cairo's Lost War Horses, Grant Hayter-Menzies chronicles the lives and eventual rescue of these noble creatures, who after years of deprivation and suffering (many were blind; most were starving) found respite in Brooke's Old War Horse Memorial Hospital (still in operation and now rechristened The Brooke); he also relates the story of the challenges of founding and maintaining this scale of animal rescue. The legacy of the Old War Horse Memorial Hospital and its founder endures today in the dozens of international Brooke animal welfare facilities in existence dedicated to improving the lives of working horses, donkeys, and mules across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.