Horseytalk.net Special Interview

Dick Francis – a family business

www.dickfrancis.com
Interview sourced from The Guardian
Interview by Joanna Moorhead

When champion jockey Dick Francis turned his hand from horses to writing bestselling thrillers, he enlisted the help of his family – and now his son Felix is co-author.

It was back in 1951 that Dick Francis – then a leading jockey, now a veteran thriller writer – and his wife, Mary, first laid eyes on the Redcliffe hotel in Paignton, Devon. They fell in love with it, booked a holiday right away and vowed to return each year with their family.

It's a tradition that has continued for six decades. Mary, sadly, died in 2000 – but this month saw Dick there as usual, surrounded by no fewer than 33 members of his extended family. As well as Dick and his sons, Merrick and Felix, there are five grandchildren, siblings and siblings-in-law, nieces and nephews and cousins – and even a great-grandson, Jak, aged one. For Dick, now 88, it's become a welcome opportunity to catch up with his clan. But the annual get-together is also a way of saying thank you for all the family have done over the years for Dick Francis Incorporated.

Because the truth about Dick's 44 novels is that they've been an extraordinary example of family teamwork. Dick was always the writer, of course – but for the twists and turns of the plots, for the authenticity of his characters, and for the insights into the worlds his protagonists inhabited, he invariably turned to his family for help.

For many years, Mary was his right-hand helper. "She was a terrific reader and a great researcher – she did all kinds of research for me and she was great at it," says Dick. His sons helped him too – especially Felix, whose work as a physics teacher was to assist in moulding the character of Jonathan Derry, the mild-mannered hero of Twice Shy (1981). "Dad came to watch me teaching as research for that novel," says Felix, 56. "There can be nothing more nerve-racking!"

<< Dick Francis & wife Mary

Felix is sitting next to his dad today at the Redcliffe. The two reminisce on the family involvement in Dick's writing down the years: Merrick, says Felix, was the inspiration for Freddie Croft in the novel Driving Force (1991). Like Merrick, Croft ran a racing transport company. Matthew, Felix's son, provided much of the material for 10lb Penalty (1997), which features a 17-year-old would-be jockey (Matthew, who's now 30, was 18 at the time). And many others among the Francis family have been happy to weigh in with a bit of research here or a plot idea there – it's almost been like a big family hobby that pulls them all together.

Dick, Merrick and Felix Francis in Devon, 2008 >>

In recent years, though, Dick and Felix have notched up the stakes by making their collaboration official: for the last three novels, Felix has co-authored with his father. Even Money, their third joint title, is out next week.

There have been snide comments about Felix being desperate to get his name on the dust-jacket and whispers about him just wanting to cash in on his father's legacy. "Even in the family, people say, 'How does being a physics teacher make you think you can write a novel?'" says Felix. How does he deal with it? "By writing good books that get good reviews and lots of readers," he says. "The first book we did together – Dead Heat in 2007 – made the bestseller lists because it had the name Dick Francis on it, but what about the next book, Silks – it too became a top 10 bestseller. If it had been no good, it could never have done that." The reviews, he says, have been great, too.

It was his mother's death that caused Felix – who used to be head of science at an independent school in the Midlands – to step up his role and become Dick's official co-author. After Mary died, Dick felt he couldn't carry on writing without her. Dick, one of the country's most successful postwar National Hunt riders, had won more than 350 races, been champion jockey in 1953, and was a great favourite of the Queen Mother before he turned to writing in his 30s after he retired from the sport due to an accident.

His first book was an autobiography, The Sport of Queens, which documents, among other things, Dick's most famous racing moment: the final stretch of the Grand National in 1956 when, with the finishing post just seconds away and looking like a dead cert of a winner, his horse Devon Loch – owned by the Queen Mother – inexplicably fell. There were endless theories as to why the horse stumbled so close to the finish, but both Dick and the Queen Mother were inconsolable. "Francis will … earn his sombre niche in sporting history among the great failures," said the Guardian at the time.

<< Dick Francis - jockey

And so it might have been, had not John Junor, then the editor of the Sunday Express, asked Dick to do a racing column. Alongside it, the embryonic writer decided to try his hand at thrillers. "At first they were very tied up in racing, because it was the world I knew," says Dick. "Then I started to look a bit more widely, although most of my books have some foothold in the racing world." It was to help him research this wider world that Mary, and the rest of the family, came in: and a very successful move it turned out to be.

But after Mary's death, Dick's pen dried up – until, says Dick, his younger son decided to take charge. "Felix changed things. He said, 'You've not written a book now for five years.' And he knew that was because my wife had been the driving force behind all the books. I said, 'I can't write any more now Mary's gone.' But he said, 'Yes you can – I'll help you.'"

The resulting book, Under Orders, thrilled Dick Francis fans everywhere. But the truth was that Felix had been heavily involved in its writing – just as involved as his mother had been in the previous titles. When a legal case in the US underlined the importance of being upfront about who had actually authored a book, the publishers got twitchy about Felix's unofficial role – and the decision was taken, says Felix, to put his name on the cover alongside that of his dad.

He was happy to oblige. Dick's agent had been talking about hiring an outside writer to assist Dick – but to Felix that felt, if not exactly like selling off the family silver, then definitely like buying in a polisher when he was perfectly capable of putting the shine on it himself.

Dick & his immediate family on holiday
together in Paignton, Devon, 2008 >>

The collaboration is going as well as either father or son could have hoped it would, says Felix. "We're very close, we don't really argue about anything. We had a bit of a set-to last night because I said he should wear trousers rather than shorts in the dining room at the Redcliffe, but that's as bad as it gets.

"The bottom line is, I'm immensely proud of everything he and my mother achieved – and more than anything I want to carry that on. Dick Francis has always been a family business, and I'm maintaining the family business." And being a family business, his death won't be the end for Dick Francis or his novels. "Dick Francis is a brand," says Felix. "And I mean to carry it on."

Doesn't he mind, though, that his identity may be obscured by being Dick's son? Many men spend their whole lives trying to move outside their father's shadow – and he seems to be putting himself inside it. That's an interesting question, he says, giving the impression it's one he's not inclined to address. There's a whiff about him of a man who's still slightly mesmerised by the switch from physics teacher to bestselling author – perhaps any agonising over his identity will come, if at all, much further down the line.

But you also get the sense that – like many a child who's taken over the family firm – Felix hopes he might one day make the brand better than ever.

"People ask: why don't you do your own thing?" he says. "But this is my own thing." And when people tell him his style of writing is almost identical to Dick's, he is genuinely surprised. That style is, he says, almost like breathing for him. He was brought up on it – brought up with the plots and the twists and the storylines. "Breakfast conversation in our house tended to be about things such as what damage a bullet hole would do to a man's chest," he says.

He feels, too, that reigniting Dick's career has been very good for his dad, who, despite losing a leg a few years ago, is still "pretty tough". "It's given him a new lease of life," he says. "He enjoys working – we enjoy working together." And there have been plenty of conversations at the Redcliffe this summer about the plot for novel number 45. "My youngest son, William, who's 23, has just passed out from Sandhurst," says Felix proudly. "I think it's fair to say you can expect a plot featuring a soldier soon."