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,...

When jockey Martin Stukely dies following a fall in a steeplechase at Cheltenham races, he accidentally embroils his friend Gerard Logan in a perilous search for a stolen videotape. Gerard Logan...

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...

At an annual party to celebrate the success of the racing season, everything seemed to be running well to form—including the need for more champagne. Then a runaway horsebox ploughed into the...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Jockey Freddie Croft thought he'd left the perils behind him when he retired from the jump game. These days he was happy to transport horses from their stables to the races. Until one of his...

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...

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...

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...

Philip Nore is nearing the end as a jockey. George Millace is finished in photography. The difference is that Millace is dead - and Nore has discovered his secret: a set of files which would blow...

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...