Jean-Louis Gouraud, seventy-five years old, a journalist by vocation, begins to work at the magazine Jeune Afrique in 1968, in his youth he traveled that continent many times, he was passionate about their issues but also for their ambitions, which have a common denominator: the education, training. This is why for years he dedicated himself to studying, consulting and editing for the managers from Tunis to Dakar, via Tripoli, Moscow and back to Tataouine! “My weakness or my chic side is to turn a blind eye,” he says with a malicious smile, greedy, good-natured. But make no mistake, you must see the energy in this man!

He was born in Paris where he discovered horse riding at the age of ten in a shady little Neuilly riding school, as long as his business was booming, not even work trips prevented Gouraud from making the necessary changes, to seek out the possibility of “Quenching his thirst for horseback riding.”

He asks, nourishes himself, and notes …

That’s when the editor appears. In the 90s, “there was a lot to do, to publish.” The intelligence of Gouraud, who was born “editor”, was not to be editor himself. The topics which interested them were handled by the most competent and published professionals (Favre, Rocher, Actes Sud, etc.) and thus were able to preserve its freshness, its touch. Out from the printers came out more than two hundred titles… Some good and some not as good. Gouraud, who signed some of the books, including the one that won him the Pocket Renaudot Prize in 2006 for the Pérégrin émerveillé, who delayed his memorable foray on horseback from Paris to Moscow, acknowledges with pleasure. Like when you fall off your horse, you immediately get back on your feet.

His latest work is nothing more and nothing less than the “Bibliographie Équestre” which recapitulates his work and that, with the generosity that characterizes him, he gave to the World Horse Library.

More information:

• Equestrian bibliography of Jean-Louis Gouraud