TRIBUTE has been paid to a popular Ludlow author after his death.

Ludlow's Merlin Unwin Books said they were sad to learn that their author, Jeremy James, had died in Shropshire on September 25 after bravely enduring a long illness.

Born in Kenya in 1949 and educated at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester and the University of Wales, Mr James spent his early life working with horses and cattle in Africa and the Middle East.

His first book, Saddletramp, came in 1987, and described his journey on horseback from Turkey to his home in Wales.

Three years later, he rode through the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and wrote Vagabond. Throughout the early 1990s he was Turkish correspondent for several broadsheets and magazines, and in 1992 was commissioned by the International League for the Protection of Horses to write their story in Debt of Honour.

He went on to manage the Bosnian State Stud and was a member of the Long Riders Guild.

During the late 1990s, he worked as a senior consultant for the ILPH on the campaign against the long-distance transportation of live horses for slaughter, which brought him into contact with many of the disappearing horse breeds of Eurasia.

His writing career reached its zenith with his writing of a faction account, The Byerley Turk, based on the extraordinary life of chance and fate of this remarkable horse, who became the first foundation sire of the thoroughbred line.

Mr James' research into this book took him to Turkey where the foal was born, to the site of the 1686 Siege of Buda, where the war horse was seized by Captain Robert Byerley and ridden back to England, and to Northern Ireland where the horse is recorded as fighting in the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 after winning the King’s Plate at Down Royal races.

The story ends in 1703 when the Byerley Turk, retired to a life of stud in Yorkshire, dies at the age of 25. Mr James' masterpiece, The Byerley Turk, has been printed in many editions and translated into Turkish, Slovakian and found fame on both sides of the Atlantic.

Flamboyant at times, but also happy in his own company, Ludlow local Mr James loved people, horses and dogs, wine and old friendships. He will be missed.