Summary
The date is 1956, Aintree, and Dick Francis is riding the Queen Mother's horse to victory in the Grand National. Except Devon Loch collapses bizarrely to the ground within sight of the finishing post. The jockey later says that he never recovered from this defeat. But the strange case of Devon Loch and the most famous Grand National of them all is the making of Dick Francis, who becomes both a household name and a best selling author too.
Martin Broughton, chairman of British Airways, the British Horse Racing Board and - for a while - Liverpool FC, chooses Dick Francis as his example of a man who succeeded in two careers. The Francis novels have sold in millions. Philip Larkin loved the opening lines: "There was a godawful cock up in Bologna," begins The Danger.
But there have been question marks over whether the books were all his own work. Mischievous biographer Graham Lord tells Miles Warde why he thinks Dick's wife, Mary, was responsible. "Garbage," says Martin Broughton. Expert opinion comes from Jonathan Powell, racing correspondent of the Mail on Sunday and a man who knew Dick Francis in his later years. The presenter is Matthew Parris, the producer Miles Warde.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the |
| 0:03.8 | podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC. |
| 0:08.6 | It's a massive area but I'd sum it up as stories to help us make sense of the forces shaping the world. |
| 0:15.0 | What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism |
| 0:20.0 | and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines. |
| 0:23.7 | And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject |
| 0:28.3 | you might not even have thought you were interested in. |
| 0:30.2 | Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment, |
| 0:36.1 | you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:39.8 | Great Lives is a download from Radio 4. |
| 0:42.2 | We hope you enjoy what you're about to hear. |
| 0:45.2 | Over the heaven knows how many years I've been presenting great lives, |
| 0:49.6 | it's been rare for me to get excited by the prospect of anyone chosen from the world of sport. |
| 0:55.4 | Boxers baffle me, why would anyone want to get hit? |
| 0:58.5 | Cricketers bore me, not so much rigid as limp. |
| 1:01.6 | But it's my job to listen with as open a mind as I can muster, and |
| 1:06.2 | enthusiastic guests on our programme regularly surprise me with a life I didn't think I'd |
| 1:12.0 | care about and in the end do. Can I be roused by horse flesh? |
| 1:17.0 | Well, today's life has stirred the imagination of millions. |
| 1:21.0 | The late Dick Francis was a jockey. In fact, he was a champion jockey almost six decades ago. |
| 1:28.0 | Am I bothered? Well, perhaps when you consider that Dick Francis's name has appeared on the cover of millions |
| 1:35.2 | and millions and millions of books, bone cracks, smokescreen, high stakes and for kicks, |
... |
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