Dick Francis: A Racing Life by
Graham Lord
hbk out October 99
Published by Little,Brown
at £16.99
Now it can be told (Except it has been told, more or less, for years, and except that it isn't exactly the whole truth): the Dick Francis novels are written by Dick and Mary Francis. I was told this myself, under an injunction to breathe not a word by Mary at, I think, a Foyles Literary Lunch many years ago. And until Graham Lord came to see me while writing this life of Dick I kept my lips sealed, however much I had been told the secret before taking the oath.
And, by and large, though Graham Lord makes a good deal of his revelation, mostly by way of justifying his facts, it doesn't much matter. The thing is we've got the books, and wonderful the best of them are. I still remember the way I was caught by the very first words of the very first of them. The mingled smells of hot horse and cold river mist filled my nostrils. The scene instantly evoked, Yes, I thought, with that comforting feeling that there is pleasure after pleasure to come, I am in the hands of a real writer.
But in whose hands was I? Dick's? Or Mary's? Or, as I now think most probable, Dick-and-Mary's? But in those days, and for many days and years afterwards, I simply assumed I was reading just what Dick Francis had written. I marvelled then, as I still do, at the way that some human beings are gifted with the skill of pure fiction, while many people a lot more intelligent, with a lot more to say, with if you like a much greater sensitivity, who at some stage set out to write a novel, simply cannot produce the right stuff. I marvelled, and I was content to accept the fact as I had been given it.
I even, in my little book Writing Crime Fiction, advocated race-riding as a means of acquiring a sense of timing, one of the great Dick Francis virtues (I also suggested less demanding physical activity). So mud on my face? Well, not if you are prepared to discard the romantic notion - on which I was brought up - that a novel or a poem has to be the work of one dedicated individual or it is flawed. Once abandon this somewhat high-falutin' (Graham Lord makes some pleasant fun out of Dick's tendency to drop his final g s) idea and everything I and my fellow reviewers have said in praise of the 'Dick Francis' books holds good.
From a literary critic's point-of-view, indeed (and the 'Dick Francis' books are absolutely worthy of lit-crit discussion) the interest is in how the twin authors worked together. I long to be able to spend a lengthy period with them, going over the books page by page, line by Line, asking whose contribution this was, whose that. Reverting to those words The mingled smells of hot horse and cold river mist, it would be my guess that certainly the experience was Dick's (Mary, Graham Lord tell us, has seldom been up on a horse), and perhaps Dick set down, if not as the book's first words, something like them. And then, I hazard, Mary polished a bit, cut out an extraneous word or two, insisted on putting that wonderfully telling phrase where it belonged. Or perhaps she even, when Dick was about to begin the book he saw as making enough dough to replace the sitting-room carpet, interrogated him. Dick, what does it feel like to be riding in a race at a minor course somewhere or other? And those words emerged: Ridin’? Well, I mean, your horse is sort of hot…
Was it that way? Or another? In any case, Graham Lord’s book gives one plenty to speculate about, as well as painting a fine portrait of the man, he says, Dick Francis really was, a man whose life was devoted to horses, the champion jockey and much more.
Dick Francis: A Racing Life by
Graham Lord