On the 31 October 1920, former steeplechase jockey, and crime writer, Richard ‘Dick’ Francis CBE, FRSL, was born in Coedcanlas, Pembrokeshire, Wales. (31 October 1920 – 14 February 2010), whose novels centre on horse racing in England.

After wartime service in the RAF, working as ground crew, and later piloting Spitfire and Hurricane fighters, and later Wellington and Lancaster bombers, Francis became a full-time jump-jockey, winning over 350 races and becoming champion jockey of the British National Hunt. In 1956, riding Devon Loch for Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother in the Grand National, which famously fell when close winning.

Francis retired from the turf and became a journalist and novelist, which featured crime in the horse-racing world.

The son of a jockey and stable manager, Francis left school at 15, without any qualifications, ^[to become a jockey; and by the time he was 18, he also was training horses. In the 1980s, Francis moved to Florida in the USA, and In 1992, to the Cayman Islands, where he died of natural causes on in February 2010.

31 October 2019