The house was stripped bare of all its treasures. Gone was the furniture, the family silver, the paintings and the antique china. And if that was a shock for Charles Todd, painter of horses, how...

To the Jockey Club, the racing world would be a better place without Julius Apollo Filmer. An expert in corruption with a devastating line in witness intimidation - and proving to be a slippery...

The night before the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket sees the great and the good of the horse-racing community gathered for a prestigious black-tie gala dinner. It is a fitting testament to the glamour...

Free choice? There’s no such thing, according to Lee Morris, architect, engineer, jobbing builder and entrepreneur. Choice is pre-ordained by your personality, he says. Stratton Park racecourse,...

Alexander Kinloch, artist, has worked out a good pattern for his life. His home is a small bothy on a remote mountain in Scotland; he paints on commission, from which he derives both pleasure and...

As an amateur jockey, Roland Britten was lucky: as an accountant he was zealous. He knew he was on the hate-list of several fraudsters, but never thought pen-pushers got kidnapped. Not from a...

Perry Stuart is a TV meteorologist who routinely works before the cameras. His life calm and ordered, his face familiar to every British household, Stuart’s profound weather knowledge and...

It's the classic law of the invader. Get to the strongest guy and smash him, then watch the weaker ones fall like ninepins. Which is just what a vicious gang of horse dealers decides to do when...

At nearly eighteen, easy–going Benedict Juliard has no stronger ambition than to ride in steeplechases as an amateur jockey. His father, George, driven towards a life of public service and...

Henry Grey doesn't particularly care for having been born the heir to an earldom. He is a reserved young man whose greatest problem is his mother's match-making plots and whose greatest joy is to...

Bestselling thriller writer Dick Francis made his first career as a champion steeplechase jockey. In his autobiography he tells of his development as a rider, from his first attempts on a donkey...

On the first day of Royal Ascot, the crowd rejoices in a string of winning favourites. Ned Talbot has worked all his life as a bookmaker - taking over the family business from his grandfather - so...

Valentine, a blind, confused old man on his deathbed, seeking his peace with God, makes his last confession to a visiting friend, Thomas Lyon, mistaking him for a priest. This puts Thomas in a...

Computer whizz kid Peter Keithley, asked to transfer a betting system onto computer tape, dies shortly afterwards. An old friend of his, Jonathan Derry, finds himself in possession of the tapes...

Peter Darwin was hoping for some quiet leave from the Foreign Office. Instead he found himself in the village of his childhood – at the service of a veterinary surgeon whose operating theatre...