Black Beauty from the station from which he commuted to work. Her dependence on horse-drawn transportation fostered her respect for horses. Sewell's introduction to writing began in her youth when she helped edit the works of her mother, Mary Wright Sewell (1797–1884), a deeply religious, popular author of juvenile best-sellers. Anna Sewell never married or had children. In visits to European spas, she met many writers, artists, and philanthropists. Her only book was "Black Beauty", written between 1871 and 1877 in her house at Old Catton. During this time, her health was declining, and she could barely get out of bed. Her
Brian Sewell noted aficionado of classic automobiles, a fan of stock car racing and over several decades wrote extensively about cars, classic and contemporary, in the "Evening Standard" and elsewhere. In both his TV series, on the pilgrimage to Santiago and the Grand Tour (see above), he drove his Mercedes-Benz 560 SEC coupé. Sewell expressed a preference for driving his Mercedes barefoot. In a television programme broadcast on Channel 4 on 24 July 2007, marking the 40th anniversary of the passing of the Sexual Offences Act 1967 which partially decriminalised homosexuality in England and Wales, Sewell said, "I never came out... but