John Fairfax-Blakeborough

Major John "Jack" Fairfax-Blakeborough (16 January 1883 – 1 January 1976) was an English writer, historian, and folklorist.

Early life Fairfax-Blakeborough was born in Guisborough, His father, Richard Blakeborough, was a folklorist and dialectologist from Ripon, and a close friend of John Christopher Atkinson. Through his mother, Margaret Blakeborough, Fairfax-Blakeborough was a relative of the Bulmer family. His elder brother, Derrick, died in July 1899. Upon completing school at the age of sixteen, he began working for a broker, but soon decided he wished to pursue a career in writing instead. In 1904, aged twenty-one, he left regular employment by the paper to become a freelance writer, specialising in articles about equestrian and country sports.

His father disapproved of the decision, fearing that Fairfax-Blakeborough would struggle to make a living through writing. Horne agreed, and Fairfax-Blakeborough would later credit this gesture by Horne for his long service and loyalty to the newspaper. In addition, he wrote periodically for Yorkshire Life magazine, Fairfax-Blakeborough also continued his father's work in documenting or investigating Yorkshire folklore, such as a 1922 investigation into the historicity of Peg Fyfe. Richard Blakeborough had also been a researcher of linguistics; in 1929, Fairfax-Blakeborough assisted Alfred Pease in crafting a dictionary of the North Yorkshire dialect.

Outside of journalism, he authored 112 books on the history of horse racing, Yorkshire folklore and the Cleveland Bay horse, writing 13 racing novels in 1930 alone. Among the best known of his works are Yorkshire Days and Yorkshire Ways (1935) and The Spirit of Yorkshire (1954), the latter of which was written with his son Richard.

Alongside his writing career, Fairfax-Blakeborough also served as a racing judge at Sedgefield Racecourse, and took the position of secretary of the Cleveland Bay Horse Society, a post he held for twenty years. His final Whitby Gazette column was published posthumously on 3 January 1976.