PAUL Langford has been around the hunting scene since he was nine - when he was unexpectedly caught up in the chase near his family home in the green belt close to Birmingham.

That first image remains with him today and he tells all in his first novel Fox Hunt - The Huntsman and the Whore.

It's a work of fiction set in "not so very far away" countryside that was published at the end of October.

Educated at secondary level, Mr Langford, aged 53, worked a paper round to save enough money to buy his own horse and was off at the gallop before he could say "tally-ho".

His experience of the hunt and all that goes with it - the social sagas, chasing the fox and man's pursuit of woman, and other men in some cases - takes his book beyond the Jilly Cooper zone.

Hunting is a religion to the inhabitants of Rush Valley, the fox is God with everything revolving around the sacred, timeless calendar of the hunting season. The outside world is shut out, but change is coming.

The beautiful wife of a wealthy landowner chooses the summer to stand up to her bullying husband by embracing all that the countryside has to offer, including a huntsman from the local pack. But the husband has his own, equally pressing, agenda. He wants total domination of the hunt and has no intention of letting anything, or anyone to get in his way.

A working artist currently preparing for a Paris exhibition in June, Mr Langford lives in Burford.

Of his first novel, he said: "I was a huntsman for a long time. It is a work of fiction, coming out of long experience of the hunting scene and harbours no particular brief for either side of the present argument. However, I am writing a sequel.

"I have had a life-long passion for horses but I've not hunted since a riding accident. Having been painting for 28 years, I now want the best of both worlds, and I hope that the book and my paintings will eventually fund another horse."

l Fox Hunt ( ISBN 1-84426-253-7) is published by Upfront Books at £10 and available at Books, Books, Books in Tenbury Wells, Castle Book Shop, Ludlow or direct from PO Box 30, Tenbury Wells WR15 87T