Recalling Dick Francis

During my public radio days, a news reporter stopped by my office to ask my advice. It seems that she was scheduled to interview some writer named Dick Francis and didn't know a thing about him. Did I recognize the name?
But of course.

In the early 1970s, my father - who did not like horses - discovered Dick Francis's mystery novels, each of which was based on some aspect of life with horses. He had been a successful jockey, and upon his retirement began writing. It took him a while to turn his pen to mysteries, and he found his work almost immediately popular.

When the mysteries began to arrive in book shops, many of us found ourselves drawn into this unfamiliar world to the degree that we couldn't wait for the next one. The former jockey who, with his wife doing "research," and presumably providing the kind of critiques at which women excel, became widely admired in this new profession. The plots were clever, the characters sufficiently drawn, and the writing vigorous and direct. Each autumn in the UK a new Francis tale would arrive, to be followed by publication in the USA the following Spring.

Anyway, I filled in Linda P., the young reporter, and asked her to bring Mr Francis by the next day so that I could meet him. When they arrived in my office, I was surprised by the author's deep blue eyes and the softness of his handshake. He spoke quietly, and his manner was gentle.

Immediately I thought I could understand how skilled he must have been in managing a horse at full tilt.
His most recent book which I had acquired in London was on my desk top - I hoped for an autograph - he was intrigued that I would have what he called the "English" edition and pointed out with pride that his wife had designed the book's cover.

By a quirk of fate, I had gotten to know a former jockey in Minnesota who had won the Grand National on an American horse named Jay Trump. I mentioned this to Francis, and he lit up - turns out he was the only turf writer in England who had picked that horse to win. I hadn't known that after retiring from riding, he had become a writer for the Daily Express for a number of years, focussing on - surprise, surprise - horse racing.

Some years later when I was involved with a support group for the Veterinary College at the University of Minnesota, I wrote him to invite him to speak to our members during a forthcoming book tour. He wrote a long, thoughtful, chatty, and exceedingly gracious regret, and I treasure it to this day.

His wife died in 2000, but he carried on with his son Felix, and one surmises that Felix will now take on the burden of continuing what has become a most successful literary enterprise, but I fear that it probably won't be quite the same. The father experienced the joys and the pain of succeeding, falling, and failing in the highly competitive world of horse racing, but we can all hope that Felix can push the enterprise forward in his own special way.

Two interesting aspects of Dick Francis's life were his service as a bomber pilot in the British Air Force in World War II and his years spent as the jockey to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother. The former he never wrote about, so far as I know, and the second involved a great disappointment when his horse Devon Loch collapsed while in the lead near the end of the famed Grand National - and lost. That event will never been forgotten, but his novels will probably be read for decades to come.

His was a life of varied outcomes, and he seemed to manage it all with equanimity and grace - the kind of ride one would expect from a good jockey.