Caroline Silver, a model, writer, editor and crossword-compiler, has died. She was 83. The Guardian reported that she was a model in London in the late 1950s, but her "secretarial training and chutzpah stood her in good stead later when she became a freelance journalist for a range of publications including the Telegraph and the Sunday Times."
Living in New York in the '60s, she worked for Scholastic as math editor and crossword-compiler, and wrote books on '60s music. Her numerous horse books included Classic Lives (1973), on the breeding of racehorses; Summer with Tommy (1974), about breaking in a pony; and a guide to the horses of the world, "in which she claimed to have included two invented breeds of horse to make it seem the most comprehensive on the subject," the Guardian noted. She also exercised racehorses, wrote scripts for short BBC films, and in the early '80s wrote a lively and witty monthly property column for Harpers & Queen magazine.
Silver "had a passion for knowledge, undertaking courses at Columbia University in New York in the '60s, and later in horticulture and horse care at Hartpury College, Gloucestershire, and in nursing from the Red Cross. She did not have a degree, but would cheerfully invent one if required: she believed that if you could do a job well, you should have the job," the Guardian wrote.