Elizabeth Mary Josephine Purbrick (née Boone; born 16 May 1955 at Warren Farm,

West Acre West Acre is a village and civil parish in the King's Lynn and West Norfolk district of the county of Norfolk, England. It covers an area of and had a population of 187 in 83 households at the 2001 census, the population increasing to 260 at ...

Norfolk Norfolk ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in England, located in East Anglia and officially part of the East of England region. It borders Lincolnshire and The Wash to the north-west, the North Sea to the north and eas ...

) is a winner of an Armada Dish at the

Badminton Horse Trials The Badminton Horse Trials is a five-day event, one of only seven annual Concours Complet International (CCI) Five Star events as classified by the Fédération Équestre Internationale (FEI). It takes place in May each year in the park of ...

in 1984 having competed several times with several mounts including Peter the Great and in many different events. In 1978 she went as an individual to the World Championships at Lexington, Kentucky but finished a poor 16th. There were no less than 22 retirements on the cross country phase. She was part of the British team selected for the

1980 Olympics The 1980 Olympics may refer to: * 1980 Winter Olympics, Lake Placid, New York, United States * 1980 Summer Olympics The 1980 Summer Olympics (), officially known as the Games of the XXII Olympiad () and officially branded as Moscow 1980 (), wer ...

which the British team attended in part, the British government taking no official position on the US-led boycott. In 1981 she was a member of the team that won a European Gold Medal at Horsens, Denmark. After moving to

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

, Purbrick retired after being ousted by the UK equine institutions. There on a small farm breeding horses, she also coached young people in horsemanship and maintained a

parrot Parrots (Psittaciformes), also known as psittacines (), are birds with a strong curved beak, upright stance, and clawed feet. They are classified in four families that contain roughly 410 species in 101 genus (biology), genera, found mostly in ...

sanctuary. After her marriage broke down she returned to the UK, engaging again with the horsemanship community, and also became involved in a personal relationship with Conservative peer Lord Prior. In 2018, after Purbrick had seen Prior in the company of another woman, she entered his home in

Kennington Kennington is a district in south London, England. It is mainly within the London Borough of Lambeth, running along the boundary with the London Borough of Southwark, a boundary which can be discerned from the early medieval period between th ...

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with a key that he had given her, and then daubed graffiti on the walls in pig's blood. In a later High Court case, she admitted one charge of criminal damage. District judge Susan Green described the "series of highly abusive slogans" as "quite appalling", and sentenced Purbrick to 120 hours' community service and imposed a

restraining order A restraining order or protective order is an order used by a court to protect a person in a situation often involving alleged domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, assault, harassment, stalking, or sexual assault. Restraining and perso ...

. She appeared on ITV Daytime show ''

This Morning This Morning may refer to: * ''This Morning'' (TV programme), a British daytime television programme * ''This Morning'' (radio program), a Canadian radio show which aired from 1997 to 2002 * ''CBS This Morning'', an American morning show, succes ...

'' on 30 July 2018.

References

British event riders 1955 births Living people British female equestrians {{UK-equestrian-bio-stub