Post by Ace on Feb 15, 2010 13:38:35 GMT -5
A long exciting accomplished well lived life but I shall truly miss him as a voice and a writer. His heroes always had such great character, integrity and intelligence and I always felt as if they were representative of Francis as a man.
I love his books and I'm glad there are a few I haven't read yet - they're always wonderful re-reads and listens (Tony Britton reading Francis is a true pleasure). I hope his son continues writing.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/books-obituaries/7237004/Dick-Francis.html
Dick Francis, who died on February 14 aged 89, began his career as a professional jockey, becoming Champion National Hunt Jockey in 1953-54, and famously rode in Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother's colours in the Grand National of 1956; after retiring from the Turf, he became a successful writer of 42 thrillers, topping the best-seller lists for more than 40 years, with worldwide sales of well over 60 million.
14 Feb 2010
As a National Hunt jockey, Francis had ridden in 2,305 races and ridden 345 winners. He became part of racing folklore when, in March 1956, he rode the Queen Mother's horse, Devon Loch, in the Grand National.
Francis and Devon Loch had just jumped the last fence, well clear of the rest of the field and set to break the previous record time, when suddenly, 30 yards from the winning post, with the race commentators screaming "Francis wins!", Devon Loch sank on her hindquarters, her front legs sprawling; having pulled a muscle in doing so, she could not recover to win the race.
The cause of her collapse provoked intense speculation and spawned theories that would not have been out of place in a Dick Francis thriller. One Aintree vet felt that the horse must have had a sudden attack of cramp; another identified a blot clot in the hind leg. Other theories suggested that, as the accident had happened alongside a water jump, the horse, sensing the reflection, had attempted to leap a non-existent obstacle; or that an underground cable had shorted on the horse's racing plates.
Francis, however, preferred two more likely, if more prosaic, possibilities – either that the horse had slipped, or that it had been unnerved by the noise of anticipation of a Royal win. Whatever the cause, Francis's failure to win the Grand National remained the great sorrow of his life, though it was his determination not to be labelled for all time as "the man who lost the Grand National" that spurred him on to become a writer.
He had more than his fair share of accidents and breakages, which he liked to recount with pride mixed with a certain gory relish. He reckoned to fall off once every 11 or 12 races: "I've had a fractured skull, six broken collar bones, five broken noses, no end of ribs. Well, you simply stop countin'."
He injured his shoulder so badly that for the rest of his life he had to go to bed with his arm strapped up to prevent it from dislocating. Once, he recalled, "a horse put his foot right through my face, slicing my nose open. I had 32 stitches from above my eye to the end of my nose. The doctor was delighted because he could show the inside of a nose to all his students."
This was typical Francis and, like their author, his fictional heroes endure all manner of pain and physical and mental torment with exemplary patience and composure. Thirtyish, usually dark-haired, sallow-skinned, mild-mannered and self-deprecating, the typical Francis hero is as intrepid and resourceful and as vigorously heterosexual as James Bond; but unlike the caddish Bond they are also decent and chivalrous, and the reader knows they will turn into faithful, passionate husbands: "What it comes to," Francis liked to say, "is that I never ask my main character to do anything I wouldn't do myself."
Where other thriller writers probed the darker crannies of the soul, Francis reaffirmed the values of human decency and the struggle between the man of good against the forces of lust for power, dishonesty and greed. Heroes can expect to be chained, beaten, burned or flayed two or three times per book – but good always triumphs in the end.
Francis possessed all the traditional tools of the thriller writer's trade – narrative urgency and a subtlety in intellectual problem-solving – but he combined these with an emotional realism which had eluded writers like Agatha Christie. No one could convey as well as he what it felt like to be drowned, hanged, crushed by a horse or soaked in icy water and left dangling, gagged and bound from a hook in the middle of a Norfolk winter's night.
He also had a minute eye for detail and an ability to take even the most un-horsey of readers into his world. He was as convincing in his portrayal of the spartan existence of the stable lad as he was in that of the sybaritic lifestyle of the manipulating owner in his home counties pad: "Not to read Dick Francis because you don't like horses," remarked one reviewer in Newsweek, "is like not reading Dostoyevsky because you don't believe in God."
Like his heroes, Francis was a man of stern self-discipline. From 1962, when his first novel, Dead Cert, was published, he produced a book a year, starting to write on January 1 and delivering the typescript to his publishers by April 8 for publication in September. Only once, when his wife was ill, did he deliver two weeks late.
He would personally take the first copy of each of his books round to Clarence House, and soon transmuted from the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother's favourite jockey to her favourite author. It was, he confessed, partly to spare her blushes that he never included scenes of explicit sex, though he once observed: "I'd be no good at that kind of thing anyway."
Few British novelists were as successful or held in greater affection by their readers than Francis. Among countless accolades, he won three Dagger Awards (including the Cartier Diamond Dagger, for his life's work) from the British Crime Writers' Association. He also won three Edgar Allen Poe Awards for Best Novel, and a Grand Master title for his life's work from the Mystery Writers of America. He had admirers in all parts of the world; races were named in his honour and films were made of his books as far afield as Russia.
He had his admirers in more highbrow circles as well. Philip Larkin praised the "absolute sureness of his settings, the freshness of his characters, the terrifying climaxes of violence, the literate jauntiness of style, the unfailing intelligent compassion". CP Snow described him as "a writer with qualities and gifts which few novelists begin to possess". John Mortimer noted: "He has the true writer's knack of making you want to turn the page, no matter how agonising you may find the operation when stretched out on a slab of Aegean rock."
Richard Stanley Francis was born into the saddle on October 31 1920 in Pembrokeshire, Wales – his grandfather and great-uncle had been two of the best amateur riders of their generation. Before the First World War, his father had been a steeplechase jockey and after the war ran a hunting stable. Dick and his brother learned to ride before they could read.
While Dick was still a boy, the family moved to near Maidenhead, in Berkshire, where his father became a horse dealer. Dick had a somewhat perfunctory education at Maidenhead County Boys' school, as his father was convinced that a good day's hunting would teach him more than a day at school: "What he can't learn on the back of a horse is not worth teaching," was his motto.
Dick vividly remembered fights between his parents, as his mother argued for education and his father for riding. Nevertheless, he learned enough of the basics to enjoy reading Sapper and Edgar Wallace in his spare time. He left school at 15 with no qualifications.
All he ever wanted to do was to ride, and even as a boy he became a well-known figure in National Hunt racing, appearing at the course with his father. When the Second World War broke out he wanted to go into the cavalry, but he ended up in the RAF; commissioned as a pilot in 1943, he flew Wellingtons and then Lancasters.
During the war he met his future wife, Mary Brenchley, at his aunt's hotel in Weston-super-Mare, where they were both attending the wedding of his cousin. Mary had already met most of his family and had heard him referred to as "poor old Dick". Assuming that this implied some sort of mental or physical defect, she was surprised when she saw a handsome young man, and subsequently learned that the "poor" referred to the fact that he had ended up in the RAF when all he had ever wanted to do was ride.
Mary herself knew nothing about horses and confessed to being nervous of them. She had also had a much better education than Francis; she had read French and English at London University before becoming an assistant stage manager at Hertford rep, a company that included the young Arthur Lowe. But it was "love at first sight".
Neither family was particularly keen on the match. Francis's family wanted him to marry someone who could ride; Mary's family wanted her to marry someone with a steady job. But they married in 1947 at a Methodist chapel in London. As new clothes were impossible to buy, Mary had made herself a dress out of a cheese-straining cloth, with gold sequins sewn around the hem. Francis arrived at the ceremony with a broken collarbone.
They went to live in Cheshire, where Francis became a steeplechase trainer's assistant and amateur jockey. In 1948 he turned professional and was retained to ride Lord Bicester's horses. In 1953 he joined Peter Cazalet's yard, where many of the Queen Mother's horses were trained. He rode in her colours many times and was champion jockey in the 1953-54 season.
Though he was often injured, he claimed never to have been afraid: "I never thought about it. If you can do the job, fear doesn't enter into it. When you see the whole line of a racecourse between your horse's ears, it's the most exciting thing in the world." He denied that the racing world was as sleazy as was often depicted in his novels, claiming that the closest he had ever got to crime was when he put the telephone down on someone who offered him a bribe to lose a race. He never gambled.
But for the Grand National debacle, he would probably have gone on riding for a few years and then become a trainer, but he was determined to become known for more than his failure to win the National. After a particularly bad fall at Leicester in 1957, he took the advice of the Queen's trainer, Lord Abergavenny, that he should give up while he was still at the top and retired from professional racing.
He had already half-written his autobiography, Sport of Queens, which was published later that year. He also became a journalist, reporting on racing for the Sunday Express.
In 1960, with his wife's encouragement, he turned his hand to a novel. The result, Dead Cert, was published two years later to respectful praise. By the time his second novel, Nerve, came out in 1964 the reviewers were beginning to suggest that he looked good for many more winners.
Francis picked up ideas for his novels in his travels round the world's racecourses. The idea for Slay Ride (1973), for example, came to him when he was in Oslo for the Norwegian Grand National in 1972. It was a small and charming course with a pond in the middle – "Just the place to find a body", Francis remarked – and the book was all about a corpse discovered in the pond at the Oslo racecourse. The Norwegians repaid the compliment by naming one of their races the Dick Francis Handicap.
Sometimes Francis claimed that he would begin a book with no preconceived plans at all: "I just start with a first line. With Enquiry (1969) we said 'What's the worst thing that can happen to a jockey?' and I wrote down: 'Yesterday, I lost my licence.' The rest of the book just followed from that. There is no going back. I start on page one and go straight on to the end. I never scrap a chapter or change my mind halfway."
As well as his novels, in 1986 Francis wrote a biography of Lester Piggott, whom he had known since his days as a jockey and who had become a close friend.
A courtly, courteous man, Francis had old-fashioned views on women and believed that racing should be a man's sport: "I love a woman's body and I don't like to see it knocked about. I really hate to see a woman jockey riding over jumps. I don't have girls doing active things in my books. A man's job is to protect women."
It therefore raised some eyebrows when, in 1999, the Racing Post led with a story that Francis was not the true author of his books but that they had been written by his wife, Mary – and had been from the start.
The report was based on an unauthorised biography of the 78-year-old Francis, Dick Francis: A Racing Life, by Graham Lord. Lord claimed that Mary Francis had helped to write the books but had never received any credit, building a circumstantial case based in part on the theory that, since Francis had left school at 15, he was not capable of researching and writing the books on his own. He quoted one of Francis's oldest friends, recalling how bad Francis was in English lessons at school, and pointed out that Mary was the better educated of the two.
Lord claimed that, in a newspaper interview with the Francises in 1980, Dick Francis praised his wife so much that "he made it sound as if it were she, not he, who actually wrote the books". Later Lord asked Mary point-blank if she wrote her husband's books. "That's an impossible question to answer," Lord quoted her as replying. "Yes, Dick would like me to have all the credit for them, but believe me it's much better for everyone, including the readers, to think that he writes them because they're taut, masculine books that might otherwise lose their credibility. Please don't quote this in your article." Lord claimed he had sat on this information for two decades so as not to spoil their careers.
The Francises had never made any secret that Mary had played an important part; she was the one who did all the background research: for Flying Finish (1966), she learned to fly, produced a book about flying, then started an air taxi service which she ran for seven years. She learned to paint for In the Frame (1976) and became such an accomplished photographer for Reflex (1980) that she was asked to take a picture of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother for a book's dust-jacket.
Francis always referred to his writing career in the plural: "I always say 'we' because I couldn't do the books without Mary," he said on one occasion. "I wish that Mary would let me put 'By Dick and Mary Francis' on the books."
Nevertheless, Lord's biography was greeted with tight-lipped annoyance by Francis's publishers, and the Francises themselves attempted to blunt its impact in interviews. "Graham Lord is guessing and he has no hard facts," Mary Francis said. "The amount of sharing we do is private."
"It is not the case that Mary writes the books," claimed her husband. "I do all the stories. I write them out in longhand. She then reads and edits them, because she can manage my handwriting, and I put them into the computer."
While the nature of Mary's literary contribution remained a mystery, no one could be in any doubt that the Francises' marriage was an exceptionally close and happy one. Mary attributed its success to her husband's refusal to get into arguments: "Dick refuses to argue with me. He lets me go on and on until I run out of steam."
During most of their married life, the Francises lived modestly in a bungalow near Lambourn, Berkshire, which they had built themselves with Francis's earnings as a jockey. But Mary's health was never good. She had contracted polio when expecting their first child, and in the 1980s they moved, first to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, then to the Cayman Islands, because she could no longer take the English climate. She died in 2000.
Dick Francis, who was appointed OBE in 1984 and CBE in 2000, is survived by his sons Merrick, who became a trainer, and Felix, with whom he wrote his last four novels. Their book Even Money was published last September, and Crossfire is due to come out in the autumn.
Dick Francis dies aged 89
Dick Francis, who used his career as a champion jockey to launch an even more successful one as a thriller writer, died yesterday at the age of 89.
By Stephen Adams, Arts Correspondent
Published: 7:30PM GMT 14 Feb 2010
Link to this video
He passed away at his Caribbean home in Grand Cayman, according to a short statement released by his family.
He had not been suffering from any particular illness, according to his publicist, but had been getting "more and more frail" in recent years.
Over six decades Francis wrote more than 40 books, which have sold more than 60 million copies in more than 20 languages.
All stemmed from his first career as a National Hunt rider, in which he won 345 races and claimed the title of Champion Jockey for the 1953/54 season.
He rode in eight Grand Nationals, but never won it, famously being denied victory in 1956 while riding Devon Loch for the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.
On that occasion his horse inexplicably gave way beneath him 30 yards from the winning post at Aintree.
He retired from racing the following January, after nine years as a professional jockey, but that career became a prelude to greater things.
The Grand National incident, and the looming ignomy of going down in history as 'the man who lost the National', helped convince him to write his first book, his autobiography Sport of Queens.
He said in 2006: "The Devon Loch episode was a terrible thing but I look back on it now and I can say that if it hadn't happened I might never have written a book, and my books have certainly helped keep the wolf from the door."
He also became a racing correspondent for the Sunday Express.
In 1962 his first thriller was published, Dead Cert. Between then and 2000 he published 38 novels and a collection of short stories, making him one of Britain's most prolific thriller writers.
He was helped by his wife Mary, who became his researcher and collaborator, until her death in 2000 after 53 years of marriage.
Francis is survived by two sons, Felix and Merrick, as well as five grandchildren and one great-grandson.
Felix Francis, who co-wrote four more novels with his father since 2007, said: "My brother, Merrick, and I are, of course devastated by the loss of our father, but we rejoice in having been the sons of such an extraordinary man.
"We share in the joy that he brought to so many over such a long life. It is an honour for me to be able to continue his remarkable legacy through the new novels."
A small funeral is planned at Francis's home in Grand Cayman, followed by a memorial service in London.
Friends and former jockeys yesterday recalled Francis as a man whose personal warmth equalled his professional skills.
Stan Mellor, who became the first man to ride more than 1,000 winners, said: "He was a good man and a very good jockey – a stylish rider."
Even in those days there was the hint there was something more about Francis, he recalled.
"I can image him now sitting there and thinking," he said. "He was always mulling something over."
Mellor revealed that Francis had told him why he thought Devon Loch had given out on him on that fateful day.
"He said it was the crowd throwing their hats in the air. The horse pricked up its ears and got distracted," he said.
John Francome, the former jockey who also became an author, said: "He was a lovely person who always had a sparkle in his eye and he had a wicked sense of humour.
"He did say to me that he would have happily given up all the success he achieved as an author to have won the National on Devon Loch."
Sir Peter O'Sullevan, 91, the former BBC horse racing commentator, described Francis as "a very good mate". He said: "The last time he wrote to me was just before Christmas and he said he was very weak."
One of Francis's most avid readers was the late Queen Elizabeth [the Queen Mother] and he always used to send her a first edition of her books until her death in 2002.
A spokesman for The Queen said: "I am sure The Queen will be saddened by the news."
I love his books and I'm glad there are a few I haven't read yet - they're always wonderful re-reads and listens (Tony Britton reading Francis is a true pleasure). I hope his son continues writing.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/books-obituaries/7237004/Dick-Francis.html
Dick Francis, who died on February 14 aged 89, began his career as a professional jockey, becoming Champion National Hunt Jockey in 1953-54, and famously rode in Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother's colours in the Grand National of 1956; after retiring from the Turf, he became a successful writer of 42 thrillers, topping the best-seller lists for more than 40 years, with worldwide sales of well over 60 million.
14 Feb 2010
As a National Hunt jockey, Francis had ridden in 2,305 races and ridden 345 winners. He became part of racing folklore when, in March 1956, he rode the Queen Mother's horse, Devon Loch, in the Grand National.
Francis and Devon Loch had just jumped the last fence, well clear of the rest of the field and set to break the previous record time, when suddenly, 30 yards from the winning post, with the race commentators screaming "Francis wins!", Devon Loch sank on her hindquarters, her front legs sprawling; having pulled a muscle in doing so, she could not recover to win the race.
The cause of her collapse provoked intense speculation and spawned theories that would not have been out of place in a Dick Francis thriller. One Aintree vet felt that the horse must have had a sudden attack of cramp; another identified a blot clot in the hind leg. Other theories suggested that, as the accident had happened alongside a water jump, the horse, sensing the reflection, had attempted to leap a non-existent obstacle; or that an underground cable had shorted on the horse's racing plates.
Francis, however, preferred two more likely, if more prosaic, possibilities – either that the horse had slipped, or that it had been unnerved by the noise of anticipation of a Royal win. Whatever the cause, Francis's failure to win the Grand National remained the great sorrow of his life, though it was his determination not to be labelled for all time as "the man who lost the Grand National" that spurred him on to become a writer.
He had more than his fair share of accidents and breakages, which he liked to recount with pride mixed with a certain gory relish. He reckoned to fall off once every 11 or 12 races: "I've had a fractured skull, six broken collar bones, five broken noses, no end of ribs. Well, you simply stop countin'."
He injured his shoulder so badly that for the rest of his life he had to go to bed with his arm strapped up to prevent it from dislocating. Once, he recalled, "a horse put his foot right through my face, slicing my nose open. I had 32 stitches from above my eye to the end of my nose. The doctor was delighted because he could show the inside of a nose to all his students."
This was typical Francis and, like their author, his fictional heroes endure all manner of pain and physical and mental torment with exemplary patience and composure. Thirtyish, usually dark-haired, sallow-skinned, mild-mannered and self-deprecating, the typical Francis hero is as intrepid and resourceful and as vigorously heterosexual as James Bond; but unlike the caddish Bond they are also decent and chivalrous, and the reader knows they will turn into faithful, passionate husbands: "What it comes to," Francis liked to say, "is that I never ask my main character to do anything I wouldn't do myself."
Where other thriller writers probed the darker crannies of the soul, Francis reaffirmed the values of human decency and the struggle between the man of good against the forces of lust for power, dishonesty and greed. Heroes can expect to be chained, beaten, burned or flayed two or three times per book – but good always triumphs in the end.
Francis possessed all the traditional tools of the thriller writer's trade – narrative urgency and a subtlety in intellectual problem-solving – but he combined these with an emotional realism which had eluded writers like Agatha Christie. No one could convey as well as he what it felt like to be drowned, hanged, crushed by a horse or soaked in icy water and left dangling, gagged and bound from a hook in the middle of a Norfolk winter's night.
He also had a minute eye for detail and an ability to take even the most un-horsey of readers into his world. He was as convincing in his portrayal of the spartan existence of the stable lad as he was in that of the sybaritic lifestyle of the manipulating owner in his home counties pad: "Not to read Dick Francis because you don't like horses," remarked one reviewer in Newsweek, "is like not reading Dostoyevsky because you don't believe in God."
Like his heroes, Francis was a man of stern self-discipline. From 1962, when his first novel, Dead Cert, was published, he produced a book a year, starting to write on January 1 and delivering the typescript to his publishers by April 8 for publication in September. Only once, when his wife was ill, did he deliver two weeks late.
He would personally take the first copy of each of his books round to Clarence House, and soon transmuted from the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother's favourite jockey to her favourite author. It was, he confessed, partly to spare her blushes that he never included scenes of explicit sex, though he once observed: "I'd be no good at that kind of thing anyway."
Few British novelists were as successful or held in greater affection by their readers than Francis. Among countless accolades, he won three Dagger Awards (including the Cartier Diamond Dagger, for his life's work) from the British Crime Writers' Association. He also won three Edgar Allen Poe Awards for Best Novel, and a Grand Master title for his life's work from the Mystery Writers of America. He had admirers in all parts of the world; races were named in his honour and films were made of his books as far afield as Russia.
He had his admirers in more highbrow circles as well. Philip Larkin praised the "absolute sureness of his settings, the freshness of his characters, the terrifying climaxes of violence, the literate jauntiness of style, the unfailing intelligent compassion". CP Snow described him as "a writer with qualities and gifts which few novelists begin to possess". John Mortimer noted: "He has the true writer's knack of making you want to turn the page, no matter how agonising you may find the operation when stretched out on a slab of Aegean rock."
Richard Stanley Francis was born into the saddle on October 31 1920 in Pembrokeshire, Wales – his grandfather and great-uncle had been two of the best amateur riders of their generation. Before the First World War, his father had been a steeplechase jockey and after the war ran a hunting stable. Dick and his brother learned to ride before they could read.
While Dick was still a boy, the family moved to near Maidenhead, in Berkshire, where his father became a horse dealer. Dick had a somewhat perfunctory education at Maidenhead County Boys' school, as his father was convinced that a good day's hunting would teach him more than a day at school: "What he can't learn on the back of a horse is not worth teaching," was his motto.
Dick vividly remembered fights between his parents, as his mother argued for education and his father for riding. Nevertheless, he learned enough of the basics to enjoy reading Sapper and Edgar Wallace in his spare time. He left school at 15 with no qualifications.
All he ever wanted to do was to ride, and even as a boy he became a well-known figure in National Hunt racing, appearing at the course with his father. When the Second World War broke out he wanted to go into the cavalry, but he ended up in the RAF; commissioned as a pilot in 1943, he flew Wellingtons and then Lancasters.
During the war he met his future wife, Mary Brenchley, at his aunt's hotel in Weston-super-Mare, where they were both attending the wedding of his cousin. Mary had already met most of his family and had heard him referred to as "poor old Dick". Assuming that this implied some sort of mental or physical defect, she was surprised when she saw a handsome young man, and subsequently learned that the "poor" referred to the fact that he had ended up in the RAF when all he had ever wanted to do was ride.
Mary herself knew nothing about horses and confessed to being nervous of them. She had also had a much better education than Francis; she had read French and English at London University before becoming an assistant stage manager at Hertford rep, a company that included the young Arthur Lowe. But it was "love at first sight".
Neither family was particularly keen on the match. Francis's family wanted him to marry someone who could ride; Mary's family wanted her to marry someone with a steady job. But they married in 1947 at a Methodist chapel in London. As new clothes were impossible to buy, Mary had made herself a dress out of a cheese-straining cloth, with gold sequins sewn around the hem. Francis arrived at the ceremony with a broken collarbone.
They went to live in Cheshire, where Francis became a steeplechase trainer's assistant and amateur jockey. In 1948 he turned professional and was retained to ride Lord Bicester's horses. In 1953 he joined Peter Cazalet's yard, where many of the Queen Mother's horses were trained. He rode in her colours many times and was champion jockey in the 1953-54 season.
Though he was often injured, he claimed never to have been afraid: "I never thought about it. If you can do the job, fear doesn't enter into it. When you see the whole line of a racecourse between your horse's ears, it's the most exciting thing in the world." He denied that the racing world was as sleazy as was often depicted in his novels, claiming that the closest he had ever got to crime was when he put the telephone down on someone who offered him a bribe to lose a race. He never gambled.
But for the Grand National debacle, he would probably have gone on riding for a few years and then become a trainer, but he was determined to become known for more than his failure to win the National. After a particularly bad fall at Leicester in 1957, he took the advice of the Queen's trainer, Lord Abergavenny, that he should give up while he was still at the top and retired from professional racing.
He had already half-written his autobiography, Sport of Queens, which was published later that year. He also became a journalist, reporting on racing for the Sunday Express.
In 1960, with his wife's encouragement, he turned his hand to a novel. The result, Dead Cert, was published two years later to respectful praise. By the time his second novel, Nerve, came out in 1964 the reviewers were beginning to suggest that he looked good for many more winners.
Francis picked up ideas for his novels in his travels round the world's racecourses. The idea for Slay Ride (1973), for example, came to him when he was in Oslo for the Norwegian Grand National in 1972. It was a small and charming course with a pond in the middle – "Just the place to find a body", Francis remarked – and the book was all about a corpse discovered in the pond at the Oslo racecourse. The Norwegians repaid the compliment by naming one of their races the Dick Francis Handicap.
Sometimes Francis claimed that he would begin a book with no preconceived plans at all: "I just start with a first line. With Enquiry (1969) we said 'What's the worst thing that can happen to a jockey?' and I wrote down: 'Yesterday, I lost my licence.' The rest of the book just followed from that. There is no going back. I start on page one and go straight on to the end. I never scrap a chapter or change my mind halfway."
As well as his novels, in 1986 Francis wrote a biography of Lester Piggott, whom he had known since his days as a jockey and who had become a close friend.
A courtly, courteous man, Francis had old-fashioned views on women and believed that racing should be a man's sport: "I love a woman's body and I don't like to see it knocked about. I really hate to see a woman jockey riding over jumps. I don't have girls doing active things in my books. A man's job is to protect women."
It therefore raised some eyebrows when, in 1999, the Racing Post led with a story that Francis was not the true author of his books but that they had been written by his wife, Mary – and had been from the start.
The report was based on an unauthorised biography of the 78-year-old Francis, Dick Francis: A Racing Life, by Graham Lord. Lord claimed that Mary Francis had helped to write the books but had never received any credit, building a circumstantial case based in part on the theory that, since Francis had left school at 15, he was not capable of researching and writing the books on his own. He quoted one of Francis's oldest friends, recalling how bad Francis was in English lessons at school, and pointed out that Mary was the better educated of the two.
Lord claimed that, in a newspaper interview with the Francises in 1980, Dick Francis praised his wife so much that "he made it sound as if it were she, not he, who actually wrote the books". Later Lord asked Mary point-blank if she wrote her husband's books. "That's an impossible question to answer," Lord quoted her as replying. "Yes, Dick would like me to have all the credit for them, but believe me it's much better for everyone, including the readers, to think that he writes them because they're taut, masculine books that might otherwise lose their credibility. Please don't quote this in your article." Lord claimed he had sat on this information for two decades so as not to spoil their careers.
The Francises had never made any secret that Mary had played an important part; she was the one who did all the background research: for Flying Finish (1966), she learned to fly, produced a book about flying, then started an air taxi service which she ran for seven years. She learned to paint for In the Frame (1976) and became such an accomplished photographer for Reflex (1980) that she was asked to take a picture of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother for a book's dust-jacket.
Francis always referred to his writing career in the plural: "I always say 'we' because I couldn't do the books without Mary," he said on one occasion. "I wish that Mary would let me put 'By Dick and Mary Francis' on the books."
Nevertheless, Lord's biography was greeted with tight-lipped annoyance by Francis's publishers, and the Francises themselves attempted to blunt its impact in interviews. "Graham Lord is guessing and he has no hard facts," Mary Francis said. "The amount of sharing we do is private."
"It is not the case that Mary writes the books," claimed her husband. "I do all the stories. I write them out in longhand. She then reads and edits them, because she can manage my handwriting, and I put them into the computer."
While the nature of Mary's literary contribution remained a mystery, no one could be in any doubt that the Francises' marriage was an exceptionally close and happy one. Mary attributed its success to her husband's refusal to get into arguments: "Dick refuses to argue with me. He lets me go on and on until I run out of steam."
During most of their married life, the Francises lived modestly in a bungalow near Lambourn, Berkshire, which they had built themselves with Francis's earnings as a jockey. But Mary's health was never good. She had contracted polio when expecting their first child, and in the 1980s they moved, first to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, then to the Cayman Islands, because she could no longer take the English climate. She died in 2000.
Dick Francis, who was appointed OBE in 1984 and CBE in 2000, is survived by his sons Merrick, who became a trainer, and Felix, with whom he wrote his last four novels. Their book Even Money was published last September, and Crossfire is due to come out in the autumn.
Dick Francis dies aged 89
Dick Francis, who used his career as a champion jockey to launch an even more successful one as a thriller writer, died yesterday at the age of 89.
By Stephen Adams, Arts Correspondent
Published: 7:30PM GMT 14 Feb 2010
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He passed away at his Caribbean home in Grand Cayman, according to a short statement released by his family.
He had not been suffering from any particular illness, according to his publicist, but had been getting "more and more frail" in recent years.
Over six decades Francis wrote more than 40 books, which have sold more than 60 million copies in more than 20 languages.
All stemmed from his first career as a National Hunt rider, in which he won 345 races and claimed the title of Champion Jockey for the 1953/54 season.
He rode in eight Grand Nationals, but never won it, famously being denied victory in 1956 while riding Devon Loch for the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.
On that occasion his horse inexplicably gave way beneath him 30 yards from the winning post at Aintree.
He retired from racing the following January, after nine years as a professional jockey, but that career became a prelude to greater things.
The Grand National incident, and the looming ignomy of going down in history as 'the man who lost the National', helped convince him to write his first book, his autobiography Sport of Queens.
He said in 2006: "The Devon Loch episode was a terrible thing but I look back on it now and I can say that if it hadn't happened I might never have written a book, and my books have certainly helped keep the wolf from the door."
He also became a racing correspondent for the Sunday Express.
In 1962 his first thriller was published, Dead Cert. Between then and 2000 he published 38 novels and a collection of short stories, making him one of Britain's most prolific thriller writers.
He was helped by his wife Mary, who became his researcher and collaborator, until her death in 2000 after 53 years of marriage.
Francis is survived by two sons, Felix and Merrick, as well as five grandchildren and one great-grandson.
Felix Francis, who co-wrote four more novels with his father since 2007, said: "My brother, Merrick, and I are, of course devastated by the loss of our father, but we rejoice in having been the sons of such an extraordinary man.
"We share in the joy that he brought to so many over such a long life. It is an honour for me to be able to continue his remarkable legacy through the new novels."
A small funeral is planned at Francis's home in Grand Cayman, followed by a memorial service in London.
Friends and former jockeys yesterday recalled Francis as a man whose personal warmth equalled his professional skills.
Stan Mellor, who became the first man to ride more than 1,000 winners, said: "He was a good man and a very good jockey – a stylish rider."
Even in those days there was the hint there was something more about Francis, he recalled.
"I can image him now sitting there and thinking," he said. "He was always mulling something over."
Mellor revealed that Francis had told him why he thought Devon Loch had given out on him on that fateful day.
"He said it was the crowd throwing their hats in the air. The horse pricked up its ears and got distracted," he said.
John Francome, the former jockey who also became an author, said: "He was a lovely person who always had a sparkle in his eye and he had a wicked sense of humour.
"He did say to me that he would have happily given up all the success he achieved as an author to have won the National on Devon Loch."
Sir Peter O'Sullevan, 91, the former BBC horse racing commentator, described Francis as "a very good mate". He said: "The last time he wrote to me was just before Christmas and he said he was very weak."
One of Francis's most avid readers was the late Queen Elizabeth [the Queen Mother] and he always used to send her a first edition of her books until her death in 2002.
A spokesman for The Queen said: "I am sure The Queen will be saddened by the news."