{"id":39767,"date":"2025-10-21T07:55:57","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T07:55:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/my-dad-was-1-of-uks-most-famous-authors-this-is-why-i-use-his-name-for-my-own-books-books-entertainment\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T07:55:57","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T07:55:57","slug":"my-dad-was-1-of-uks-most-famous-authors-this-is-why-i-use-his-name-for-my-own-books-books-entertainment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/my-dad-was-1-of-uks-most-famous-authors-this-is-why-i-use-his-name-for-my-own-books-books-entertainment\/","title":{"rendered":"My dad was 1 of UK’s most famous authors – this is why I use his name for my own books | Books | Entertainment"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\"Author<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/p>\n

Author Felix Francis with his late father, novelist and champion jockey Dick Francis, in 2009 (Image: Alamy)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

\n

Felix\u00a0Francis fixes me with a broad smile. \u201cI always say fact is stranger than fiction,\u201d he says. It\u2019s quite an admission from one of the most successful crime fiction writers of the 21st century.<\/p>\n

But when you consider his father was best-selling novelist \u201cDick\u201d Francis, the late Queen Mother\u2019s former jockey whose horse Devon Loch inexplicably belly-flopped when leading by five lengths in the run-in for the 1956 Grand National, he surely has a point.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just a shame some of his father\u2019s strangest fiction never survived in print to challenge the theory.<\/p>\n

With the release of the 57th Dick Francis novel, Dark Horse \u2013 the 19th of the canon written by Felix \u2013 the author reveals to the Daily Express how his father\u2019s most imaginative stories were reserved for his young sons.<\/p>\n

Felix explains how his dad, then a Sunday Express columnist after retiring as a National Hunt Jockey, and with his first successful novel Dead Cert and more than four others already under his belt, would regularly write flights of fancy to him and his older brother Merrick while they were at boarding school.<\/p>\n

Every Sunday one would receive a typed letter, and the other the carbon copy, with their name handwritten at the top and signed \u201cLove Pop\u201d. And every week their father would alternate who got the typed original.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe never forgot which of us was due the carbon copy,\u201d says Felix, who will be speaking about his new novel and his memories of his father at The Mad Hatters Bookshop in Burford, Oxfordshire, on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey used to start with the things he had been doing in the week and then they would go into the craziest stories.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember one when he had been hunting, in a top hat, and he wrote that he had waded his horse into a river and didn\u2019t realise how deep it was so he disappeared completely under the water, and while he went along under the water to the other side, the top hat floated across and as he came up the other side the hat came back onto his head.<\/p>\n

\u201cCrazy, but they were written in fun for schoolboys and my saddest thing is that I don\u2019t have any of those letters left.\u201d<\/p>\n

Felix, now 72, adds: \u201cHe was absolutely full of wonderful stories. He was a great man and it gives me great joy now writing the \u2018Dick Francis novels\u2019. It\u2019s my choice to write them as such, not the publishers\u2019 insistence. He is still as much a part of my books as I still feel a part of the previous ones.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Read more:<\/strong> Dick Francis: The writer’s son Felix is keeping his legacy alive <\/a><\/p>\n

Read more:<\/strong> Val McDermid says Jubilee reading list should include fiction books <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\"Felix<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/p>\n

Felix Francis with his late mother Mary and father Dick (Image: Felix Francis)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

\n

Indeed, his father\u2019s voice echoes from the latest novel as its protagonist, a female jockey, is walked around the Aintree racecourse and her trainer boss tells her how to approach the daunting Chair fence.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t hesitate. Chuck your heart over and catch it on the other side,\u201d the trainer says.<\/p>\n

Felix explains: \u201cThat was something I heard my father say to Tommy Stack (twice National Hunt champion jockey and rider for Red Rum\u2019s third Grand National win) while we were walking the course at Aintree many years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Felix, who had been an A-level physics teacher and then deputy chairman of a global expedition firm, joined his father in writing after the death of his mother Mary in 2000, and collaborated on four novels before his dad\u2019s death in 2010.<\/p>\n

But then it had always been, as his mother said, \u201cthe family business\u201d.<\/p>\n

Felix says he grew up in a house where talk at the dinner table would be about the damage a bullet might do to a man\u2019s guts rather than the more mundane topics of everyday life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was nine when the first book was published and I just grew up with them, in one of the great fiction factories of the 20th century, and it was great fun,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery member of the family\u2019s occupation seems to have been included in a book somewhere. I was a physics teacher in Twice Shy; my uncle was a wine importer and that was the basis of Proof; my cousin was an architect and stars in Decider; and my brother was the basis for (ex-jockey and horse transport businessman) Freddie Croft in Driving Force.\u201d<\/p>\n

Felix was a 17-year-old A-level physics student when he designed the bomb that blew up a plane in Rat Race and his mother Mary, a theatre stage manager, took up flying as research for the same book.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe only went along for a few lessons,\u201d he says. \u201cThey told Dad he should come along but he said, \u2018No\u2019. He had done enough flying in the war. He had flown Spitfires, Wellingtons and Lancasters. People used to ask him if it was dangerous riding over the Grand National fences and he would say, \u2018At least no one is shooting at you.\u2019<\/p>\n

He adds: \u201cMum took up photography as research for Reflex and became very good. She was very good at everything she took up\u2026with the exception of painting. She wasn\u2019t too good at that!<\/p>\n

\u201cStories used to pour out of my father like water off a waterfall and my mother had a great belief in the rhythm of sentences so she would polish the prose. He was Richard, she was Mary. Together they were Dick Francis.<\/p>\n

\u201cDad often said he wanted to have her name on the front covers as well but she wouldn\u2019t hear of it. It was a partnership.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\"Dick<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/p>\n

Dick Francis rides the late Queen Mother\u2019s horse M\u2019as-Tu-Vu (Image: Helene Munson)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

\n

As Felix talks in a video call from the family\u2019s modern house in a Northamptonshire village, his mother is very much on his mind, having died exactly 25 years before.<\/p>\n

\u201cMum had polio when she was 26, when she was pregnant with my brother, and it left her breathing not great,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s why they went to live first in Florida and then in the Caribbean.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father always said he only ever got drunk twice in his life: Once when the doctors told him his wife was going to die and she was in an iron lung at Neasden isolation hospital, and the other time was six weeks later when they told him that she wasn\u2019t. She was a lovely woman.\u201d<\/p>\n

Richard and Mary published a new book every year from 1962. They would research the next book together as soon as the previous one was published in September before he started to write in January and handed the manuscript to the publishers in May.<\/p>\n

Felix now follows a similar process which means he started work this month on the plot for his next book \u2013 a daunting process.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pressure comes on and at Christmas I am like a tiger with toothache because that is always panic time. There is nothing better than having the idea for the next book before you have finished the previous one.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what happened for his 2021 book Iced, he says, after he and wife Debbie were invited to the White Turf frozen lake track at St Moritz in February 2019 while he was still writing Guilty, Not Guilty and they ended up watching the \u201cGrand National\u201d toboggan race at the nearby Cresta Run ice track.<\/p>\n

He recalls: \u201cMy wife and I went to have a coffee, sitting all wrapped up in the sunshine but freezing cold and I said, \u2018How about a jockey who is forced to retire because of his problem with weight and drinking, but he misses the adrenalin rush so he starts to race the Cresta Run \u2013 and then racing comes tofollow him because there is racing on thefrozen lake and he gets drawn into a world he\u2019s been trying to leave?\u2019<\/p>\n

With 57 Dick Francis novels already in print, the challenge always for Felix is to come up with plots not used before.<\/p>\n

His latest is the seventh involving investigator Sid Halley and only the second to be written from the viewpoint of a femaleprotagonist \u2013 Irish jockey Imogen Duffy who is being stalked by her abusive ex-partner.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll too often on the news we hear of people being murdered by coercive and controlling partners,\u201d says Felix. \u201cOn average, two women a week are murdered by an ex or current intimate partner and the number climbs to 30 a week in America so it seemed to be something I should look at.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\"Dark<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/p>\n

Dark Horse is the lates thriller in the Dick Francis series written by son Felix Francis (Image: -)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

\n

Felix, of course, no longer has his father\u2019s knowledge of racing to fall back on as the backdrop to the stories, though he can and does consult with his horse trainer brother. He also doesn\u2019t ride himself.<\/p>\n

His ambition as a boy to join the RAF was thwarted by hip problems that put him in hospital for many months and which have left him with one leg shorter than the other and restricted movement in his left hip.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth is I cannot spread my knees wide enough to sit astride a horse and even though I did once ride side saddle I decided that that was a mug\u2019s game,\u201d he says. He also never saw his father ride as a professional jockey, since he retired when Felix was four.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only film I have got of him is that ill-fated 1956 Grand National when Devon Loch collapses,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

But Felix obviously spent his childhood around jockeys, and watched his father ride out for trainer neighbour Frank Cundell. What he did inherit from his father was a great imagination.<\/p>\n

He says: \u201cI used to teach A-level physics and I used to say to my students when they started the course, \u2018Whereas geography is the study of the seen world, physics is the study of the unseen world. It is the study of the great invisibilities of life.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t see all sorts of things but we know they exist and so I always feel physicists need to have a great imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n

With that in mind, he believes he still has plenty of plot ideas left in him<\/p>\n

So what about one where the nation\u2019s favourite royal horse owner is about to win her first ever Grand National with her horse in an unbeatable position, but it suddenly jumps a non-existent fence and collapses in a\u00a0heap?<\/p>\n

Felix smiles again. \u201cI have included a few strange coincidences in my books,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I think a plot where something like that happens would be pushing the boundaries of fiction just too far.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dark Horse: A Dick Francis Novel, by Felix Francis (Zaffre Books, \u00a320) is out now; An evening with Felix Francis takes place this Thursday at The\u00a0Mad Hatters Bookshop in Burford, tickets available from\u00a0madhatterbookshop.co.uk<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author Felix Francis with his late father, novelist and champion jockey Dick Francis, in 2009 (Image: Alamy) Felix\u00a0Francis fixes me with a broad smile. \u201cI always say fact is stranger… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1023],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39767"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}