WITH the centenary this year of the founding of the Irish Army Equitation School in 1926 much will be written on its mission and success around the show jumping and eventing world. But early recognition by Judge Wylie and General Michael Hogan was that the riding officers, who were from a hunting and racing background, had a style of riding that had to change if they were to be truly successful on the world stage.

Enter Col Paul Rodzianko (1903-1993) who is credited with coaching the Irish Army show jumping riders into successful competitors. Little is published about Rodzianko’s connections with the prominent Irish writer Anita Leslie whose family hailed from Castle Leslie in Co Monaghan and she later settled in Oranmore, Co Galway.

Colonel Paul Rodzianko and the Irish Army show jumping team and grooms in 1928

The Rodzianko Years:1928-1930 in the

Army Equitation School

After their great performance in 1926 when runners-up to Switzerland in the Aga Khan Cup in Dublin, it also exposed the shortcoming of the Army riders if they were to compete successfully on the international circuit. With the appointment of Deputy Quartermaster General Michael Hogan from Kilreakle in Co Galway, whose brother Paddy was Minister of Agriculture in 1927, the Army recognised that they did not have the coaching expertise within the forces.

Hogan, who by now had the show jumping team reporting to him, met Rodzianko, who was at the time a serving officer in the 10th Hussars in England, through an introduction by Col Joe Hume Dudgeon at the show in Olympia in 1927 and hired him.

Rodzianko, born in Ukraine in 1884, was described as a white Russian and a large landowner whose family were dispossessed of the family estates after the 1917 Russian Revolution. His father Pavel was personal equerry to Czar Nicholas II. Rodzianko was a member of a cavalry regiment known as The Chevalier Guards, the Czar’s Household Cavalry. An exceptional rider, he served as an instructor in the Russian Cavalry School in Saint Petersburg. He was a member of the Russian show jumping team that had a successful record around the shows of Europe, winning The Prince of Wales Cup in 1912 and 1913, and as an individual in The King’s Cup in Olympia. He escaped from his home country at the outset of the Russian Civil War in 1920.

Colonel Paul Rodzianko, trainer of the Irish Army's show jumping team

The Caprilli Riding Style

While attached to the Russian Cavalry School he was sent to Italy to study under Captain Federico Caprilli (1868-1907) at Piedmont Royal in Pinerolo, who is credited with developing the modern method of riding known as the Caprilli Style, the modern jumping seat used today by show jumping riders.

Traditionally, the Irish Army riders came from a hunting and racing background where the rider kept their legs pushed forward, leaning back and pulling on the reins as the horse jumped.

The Caprilli Style was a direct contrast, insofar as the rider rode with shorter stirrup leathers, more forward and out of the saddle, allowing the rider’s hands to follow the horse’s mouth with their centre of gravity over the horse. This made jumping more comfortable for the horse, which made them more willing to jump without the rider interfering with them. This technique Rodzianko drilled into the Army riders, often for up to six hours a day and often riding bareback. The competition successes of the early Army riders of the time like Gerard O’Dwyer, Cyril Harty, Dan Corry, Fred Aherne, Tom Finlay, Dan Leonard and Jack Lewis are well documented, with the Army team winning the Aga Khan Cup in a unique four in a row between 1935 and 1938, as well as individual and team wins in Dublin, Biarritz, Brussels, Nice, London, New York, Toronto, Lucerne, Boston, Amsterdam, Chicago and Rome. Rodzianko returned again to coach the Irish team in the 1950s but his tenure was not as successful as his first as show jumping had changed, and so had courses during that passage of time.

The marriage of Anita Leslie and Commander Bill King in 1949

Rodzianko, The Irish Author and Marriage

Having completed his contract with the Army Equitation School Col Rodzianko returned to England, instructing at his riding stables in Richmond Park. He made the acquaintance of the writer Anita Leslie (1914-1985) who was 30 years his junior. She was a daughter of Sir Shane Leslie of Castle Leslie in Monaghan, who was a second cousin of Sir Winston Churchill, and Vermont-born Marjorie Ide. Anita was enjoying society living in London and was well connected with friends including the Mitford sisters. But she was in no hurry to marry although she had every opportunity, but rather determined to become a writer which was encouraged by her father, Shane, who had already published poems, ballads and biographies. In 1934 she returned to Paris and completed writing a book on the sculptor Rodin. From there she spent time in Poland, America, Ireland and Britain, still encouraged by her parents to travel, act and write. But the world was changing with the abdication of King Edward VIII to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson, the rise of Mosley’s fascist movement, the start on the Spanish Civil War, and Hitler’s army marching into the Rhineland.

Anita described Rodzianko as a man, ‘who always behaved as though he was leading a cavalry charge.’ His party pieces were to slice champagne corks off their bottles with his sword, and walk on his hands while singing Russian songs! Having met in Germany they married in 1937, but Anita soon realised that it was a mistake and, after being together for a short time, she used the outbreak of World War II as her escape from the marriage. However, her husband followed her to her overseas military postings.

She went initially to Beirut and worked on an English language newspaper The Eastern Times, and then to serve as an army driver in the Mechanical Transport Corp and the Red Cross, in South Africa, Cairo, Germany and the Lebanon. She later served on the front lines with the French army for which she was twice awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Desert Star for acts of heroism by General Charles de Gaulle.

Anita became a well-known author, publishing 14 books such as ‘The Gilt and the Gingerbread’, ‘Jennie’, a book on Churchill’s mother made into a TV series, ‘Sir Francis Chichester’, ‘Mrs Fitzherbert’, ‘Love in a Nutshell’, and ‘The Remarkable Mr Jerome’. She also co-authored with Rodzianko ‘Mannerheim, Finland’s Saviour’, ‘Modern Horsemanship’, and ‘Tattered Banners’. Having spent many years apart they finally divorced in 1948.

Life in the West of Ireland

Anita’s mother bought Oranmore Castle, which needed a lot of work to make it habitable, but she was intent on doing so. She had met Commander Bill King in the Lebanon during the war in 1943, who commanded submarines and was awarded seven medals for bravery. He was also an author of books like ‘The Stick and the Stars’, ‘Capsize’, ‘Adventure in Depth’, ‘Dive and Attack’, ‘The Wheeling Stars’ and ‘Kamikaze: The Wind of God’. He was the British Forces mile champion and at the end of the war he was in charge of the surrender of all the German U-boats.

Bill married Anita in 1949 in Castle Leslie and they had two children Tarka and Leonie, a graduate in Arts whose art work hangs in a number of public and private collections. Leonie married Alec Finn, a founder of the well-known Irish music group De Dannan, while Tarka farmed in Castle Leslie and published a book entitled ‘An Irishman Abroad’.

Bill made three attempts at circumnavigating the globe in his yacht, The Galway Blazer, named after the local hunt, only to hit a large sea creature on one occasion and to suffer two broken masts on another. He eventually succeeded in 1973. He was also the oldest participant in The Sunday Times Global Globe Race around the world for which The Cruising Club of America awarded him The Blue Water Medal. Anita and Bill and their children hunted with the Galway Blazers, along with Lady Molly Cusack Smith and her daughter Oonagh Mary’s Bermingham and North Galway Hounds for many years.

I remember Bill driving his convertible Triumph Herald in the depths of winter with the hood down, wearing an airman’s sheepskin jacket and a woollen hat as he drove through my hometown of Loughrea on his way to Dublin. Bill was the last surviving submarine commander of World War II and, because of the short life expectancy of submarine crews in that war, Bill was the only submarine commander to captain a submarine at the beginning and end of the war.

He passed away at the great age of 102 years on the September 21st, 2012. Bill and Anita’s final resting place is beside the lake in Castle Leslie. Since then, Sammy Leslie has transformed Castle Leslie into a luxury hotel and holiday destination.

Col Paul Rodzianko later married Joan Freeman Mitford, and is still remembered for his pioneering work with The Irish Army Equitation School.

This article is taken from The Irish Field’s Dublin Horse Show Magazine 2026. Order your copy HERE