Saturday, February 20, 2010

“Champion jockey and best-selling crime writer - Irish Times” plus 3 more

“Champion jockey and best-selling crime writer - Irish Times” plus 3 more

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Champion jockey and best-selling crime writer - Irish Times

Posted: 20 Feb 2010 05:31 AM PST

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The Irish Times - Saturday, February 20, 2010

DICK FRANCIS: DICK FRANCIS, who has died aged 89, was a unique figure – a champion steeplechase jockey who, without any previous apparent literary bent, became an international best-selling writer, the author of 42 crime novels, selling more than 60 million copies in 35 languages.

Right from the start, with Dead Cert in 1962, the Dick Francis thriller showed a mastery of lean, witty genre prose reminiscent – sometimes to the point of parody – of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. It was an American style that many clever people in England had attempted to reproduce without much success, and it was a wonder how a barely educated jockey was able to do the trick with such effortless ease. People said his highly educated wife wrote the books for him. It was a mystery that was never satisfactorily solved.

The most dramatic incident in his racing career was also a mystery. In the Grand National at Aintree in 1956, his mount Devon Loch, the Queen Mother's horse trained by Peter Cazalet, was well ahead only 50 yards from the finish when it suddenly collapsed and was unable to continue. Some said the horse had attempted to jump an imaginary fence; another theory, put up years later by Bill Braddon, Cazalet's head lad, was that the girth was too tight and the horse suddenly let loose an enormous fart.

There was no question of Francis, like a crooked jockey out of one of his own books, having pulled the horse. It had been his great dream since he was a lad of eight in 1928 and listened to the Grand National on the radio as Tipperary Tim won at 100/1, to be a steeplechase jockey and win that ultimate prize. Ironically, Devon Loch's collapse ensured Francis a place in the history of the race that he would not have had if he had been merely another winner.

Francis was champion jockey in the 1953-54 season. He rode the Queen's horses for Cazalet, the royal trainer, from 1953 until 1957. Some said he always rode like an amateur, and failed to have a really strong finish. He had indeed started as an amateur, going professional in 1948, but he was a masterful rider and a perfect size for a jump jockey, 5ft 8in and 10 stone.

In 1957 the Queen Mother sacked him. The Marquess of Abergavenny, racing administrator and friend of the Queen Mother, told him it was time to stop. He suggested that Francis had suffered too many injuries – he had dislocated his shoulder so many times that he had to be permanently strapped – and should quit while he was ahead. Francis was shattered by this dismissal by the Queen Mother, for whom he had a rather old-fashioned reverence.

He asked what he was to do for a living. The Marquess said something always turned up. Francis had wept when Devon Loch fell and he wept again, walking away from his meeting with the Marquess through Hyde Park. "I nearly flung myself into the Serpentine," he said, years later.

He wrote a racing column for the Sunday Express , but it paid only £20 a week, far less than he was used to earning. Francis was not a particularly good tipster, but he was brave in his attacks on the Jockey Club and the toffs of racing. He continued this in his thrillers. But his years at the Sunday Express did not make him love Fleet Street, and journalists were usually low, dishonest characters in his books.

The Queen Mother was a fan. He always got a first edition to her, and said he did not put in the usual sex and bad language of the genre because he knew the Queen Mother would be reading; she did once complain about the violence.

Born at Coedcanlas Farm in southwest Wales in the Pembrokeshire village of Lawrenny, Francis came from a line of farming gentry and horsemen. His father was a show rider and manager of hunting stables, his grandfather a farmer and gentleman jockey. The family home was a beautiful old farmhouse, but it had neither gas nor electricity. He went to a one-class village school, attending only three days a week and riding the rest of the time, until the family moved to Maidenhead in Berkshire, where his father was manager of a stable. Dick went to Maidenhead county boys' school, but his attendance was no better and he left at 15 to work for his father.

When the war came, he joined the RAF and served in the Western Desert before going to pilot training in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He never flew in combat, but he was a Spitfire pilot before being transferred to heavy bombers. His lack of schooling gave him trouble with navigation.

In 1947, he married Mary Brenchley. A well-off middle-class girl whose main interest was the theatre, she was assistant stage manager at the Hereford Repertory Theatre at the time and also worked as a publisher's reader. She could ride, but had no love of racing. The story goes that Dick and Mary went to see a murder mystery at the Oxford Playhouse and came away thinking they could do better. Dick produced Dead Cert and gave it to Michael Joseph because he had ridden horses for the publisher. Originally, Francis wanted Mary's name on the book as co-author, but it was thought better business sense to have only Dick's.

In his excellent unauthorised biography, Dick Francis: A Racing Life (1999), Graham Lord produces telling circumstantial evidence that Dick could not have written the books without Mary. The speculation may have arisen because Mary was a well-educated woman with a degree in French and English literature. What is clear about the thrillers is that whoever wrote them had a wide knowledge of the American tough-guy school of detective fiction. Here a knowledge of French literature would seem to be no help, while 'tec stories and thrillers would perhaps be the sort of thing a jockey would read. The fact that when interviewers spoke of formalism and hermeneutics, Dick did not know what they were talking about, proves nothing. Hammett and Chandler would probably not have known either.

Dick and Mary had a very close and happy marriage, spending seven months of the year travelling and researching, and five months writing. A book appeared every year in time for Christmas. They were all best-sellers. By the end, in Britain alone each new book would sell 100,000 in hardback and 500,000 in paperback. Francis won several gold and silver dagger awards from the Crime Writers' Association, and was given the Cartier Diamond Dagger for outstanding contribution to the genre. He was made a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master. He was appointed OBE in 1984 and CBE in 2000.

The books were unusual for best-sellers, because Francis did not have a hero like Holmes or Poirot. Only Sid Halley, an injured jockey turned detective, makes repeat appearances. The Francis tales are told in the first person, and the hero/narrator, whether ill-educated jockey or son of earl, was always an upstanding man with a secret sorrow. Francis said his damaged heroes gave him "something to fill up the pages".

The plots, too, ran to a formula. Some reviewers protested that racing could not be as crooked as depicted in the novels, but real life (as in the case of the Shergar kidnapping) came in to prove how realistic his stories were.

As well as the thrillers, he wrote his autobiography, The Sport of Queens (1957), and Lester (1986), a biography of Lester Piggott.

Because of Mary's poor health – she had suffered from polio – and his many injuries, they fled English winters for Florida and Grand Cayman in the British West Indies. Each year they returned to the Radcliffe hotel in Paignton, Devon, for a family holiday.

Mary died in 2000. Afterwards,when no new novels appeared, it looked as if Mary might have written them. But, six years later, Francis produced Under Orders, which had all the old flavour. The next year he published Dead Heat , then Silks (2008) and Even Money (2009). Much of the research for the novels was done by his son Felix, who left his job teaching at Bloxham school in Oxfordshire to work for his father. His other son, Merrick, was a racehorse trainer and then ran a horse transport business. They both survive him.

Richard (Dick) Stanley Francis: born October 31st, 1920; died February 14th, 2010 

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Book brings back memories for Edwin Edwards' daughter - Shreveport Times

Posted: 20 Feb 2010 05:02 AM PST

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MONROE — In the same restaurant here where former Gov. Edwin Edwards announced his candidacy for governor in 1971, locals flocked Thursday night to snap up copies of the new, fast-selling Edwards biography.

Area residents who came to the Chateau on Louisville Avenue also had the opportunity to have copies of "Edwin Edwards: An Authorized Biography" signed by author Leo Honeycutt and Edwards' daughter, Anna Edwards.

Honeycutt said an initial printing of 10,000 copies sold out in a few days in December and an estimated 100,000 copies have been sold or ordered since the book's release.

The 641-page book traces the life of Edwin Edwards from his childhood in Avoyelles Parish to his entrance into prison in 2002.

Honeycutt, a former broadcast reporter who worked two stints at KNOE-TV, almost did not agree to work on the project after Edwards asked him to be his biographer.

"As a reporter, I sort of bought into the idea that he just wasn't good for the state," Honeycutt said.

"And then I realized I was being as arrogant as I thought he was. When people look at the facts, he was good for the state because there were very few chief executives in any state who built coalitions that he did."

Honeycutt met with Edwards for interviews at the Federal Correctional Institution in Oakdale for five years starting in 2005.

However, the majority of the content of the book draws from news stories from the time, not Edwards' own recollections.

Honeycutt said Edwards would often describe events that Honeycutt would then go back and collect additional information on.

Honeycutt said maintaining journalistic neutrality was challenging because "almost all biographers wind up developing some sympathy for their subject," he said.

"I wanted it to read for everybody," Honeycutt said.

"He (Edwards) wanted people to read the book and understand his side of the story."

Honeycutt also spoke about the biography Thursday at the Monroe Rotary Club and at St. Frederick High School. The appearances in Monroe were the first times he has promoted the book outside of the Baton Rouge area.

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Letter to the editor: Advanced editing - Tulsa World

Posted: 20 Feb 2010 02:46 AM PST

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A recent article in the World by Tim Stanley, "Obituaries take planning, effort" (Dec. 24) was right-on.

I never thought about writing my own obituary until I read the obit of a fellow who had been the pilot of Air Force One when Eisenhower was president. There was no mention of it.

An obituary should be a mini-biography. Mine will begin by quoting a magazine article: "Red isn't too unusual for a guy who was kidnapped by Gypsies and raised by Eskimos, who has a Juke Box in his bathroom, who owned a half mile of railroad cabooses, who talks faster than you can listen, who was introduced at a speech in California as a pilot who survived more maydays than Chuck Yeager, the man who broke the sound barrier, who spent the night with John Wayne" and then go on to explain how as a 16-year-old private on a Pacific island, I caused an innocent private to become the last hero of World War II.

After telling of business adventures that ended with my being the largest aircraft dealer in the world, it will explain I was married 60 years to the warm, loyal, loving, beautiful girl I met in Bixby when she was 12 and I was 15.

My obituary will end "Red wanted to be remembered as the luckiest man to ever live in Bixby."

Letters to the editor are encouraged. Each letter must be signed and include an address and a telephone number where the writer can be reached during business hours. Addresses and phone numbers will not be published. Letters should be a maximum of 250 words to be considered for publication and may be edited for length, style and grammar. Letters should be addressed to Letters to the Editor, Tulsa World, Box 1770, Tulsa, Okla., 74102, or send e-mail to letters@tulsaworld.com.

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Poland planning bicentennial bash for Chopin - Indiana Gazette

Posted: 20 Feb 2010 04:27 AM PST

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B Entertainment

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By VANESSA GERA, Associated Press Writer
WARSAW, Poland - The stirring strains of Frederic Chopin's music are reverberating across the world as music lovers celebrate the composer's 200th birthday this year - from the chateau of his French lover to Egypt's pyramids and even into space.

But nowhere do celebrations carry the powerful sense of national feeling that they do in Poland, the land of his birth, where his heroic, tragic piano compositions are credited with capturing the essence of the country's soul.

Poland is going all out to display its best ``product,'' as officials bluntly put it, staging bicentennial concerts and other events in and around Warsaw, the city where the composer - known here as Fryderyk Chopin - spent the first half of his life.

``Fryderyk Chopin is a Polish icon,'' said Andrzej Sulek, director of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw. ``In Polish culture there is no other figure who is as well-known in the world and who represents Polish culture so well.''

Perhaps nothing better conveys Chopin's importance - literally - than his heart. It is preserved like a relic in an urn of alcohol in a Warsaw church, encased within a pillar with the Biblical inscription: ``For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.''

Just before his death at 39 from what was probably tuberculosis, a coughing and choking Chopin, fearful of being buried alive, asked that his heart be separated from his body and returned to his beloved homeland. His body is buried at the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, where Chopin spent the second half of his life.

Finding it unseemly, Polish authorities have repeatedly rebuffed scientists wanting to run DNA tests on Chopin's heart to explore a suspicion that he actually succumbed to cystic fibrosis, a disease not yet discovered in his day.

Sulek said Poland would rather have the world focus on the genius's life, not his death.

Chopin was born in 1810 at a country estate in Zelazowa Wola, near Warsaw, to a Polish mother and French emigre father. Historical sources suggest two possible dates of birth - either Feb. 22, as noted in church records, or March 1, which was mentioned in letters between him and his mother and is considered the more probable date.

Since no one is sure, Poland is marking both. A series of concerts in Warsaw and Zelazowa Wola will take place over those eight days featuring such world-class musicians as Daniel Barenboim, Evgeny Kissin, Garrick Ohlsson, Martha Argerich and Krystian Zimerman.

Then, a refurbished museum opens in Warsaw on March 1 displaying Chopin's personal letters and musical manuscripts along with a multimedia narration of his life.

Celebrations span the globe, from music-loving Austria to concerts at Cairo's pyramids and across Asia, where his following is huge.

The astronauts who blasted into orbit on the Endeavor space shuttle Feb. 8 carried with them a CD of Chopin's music and a copy of a manuscript of his Prelude Opus 28, No. 7 - gifts from the Polish government.

The Endeavor commander, George Zamka, who has Polish roots, told the Polish news agency PAP ahead of his trip to the International Space Station that listening to Chopin in space would enhance the majesty of the cosmos.

``Chopin is universal,'' said Mariusz Brymora, a Foreign Ministry official who helped put Chopin's music in space. ``We are convinced that Chopin is Poland's best brand, Poland's best product. There is nothing else like him.''

In France, Chopin is valued as ``the composer who ushered in the age of great French music,'' according to Adam Zamoyski, historian and author of the new biography ``Chopin: Prince of the Romantics.''

Chopin's entire musical output, about 15 hours worth all together, will be played by some 60 pianists at the end of February in the central French city of Chateauroux and in Paris in an event entitled ``Happy Birthday Mr. Chopin.'' The program will be filmed and later shown on French television.

And the small chateau in Nohant of Chopin's famous companion for eight years, feminist writer Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin - best known by her nom de plume George Sand - has been fixed up and will host three weeks of concerts in June. Chopin wrote some of his masterpieces at that inspirational spot in central France.

Poland's parliament has formally declared 2010 to be the ``Year of Chopin,'' and officials in Warsaw feel his Polishness must be stressed because many non-Poles still associate him primarily with France.

Chopin always had a strong Polish identity. He surrounded himself with Poles in France whenever he could and never felt fully comfortable with the French language.

The matter touches a nerve in Poland, which has more often than not been controlled by foreign powers over the past two centuries - most recently during the decades of Moscow-imposed communist rule thrown off in 1989. Poles don't want to lose credit for Chopin, a genius whose universal appeal is even greater than that of Pope John Paul II and Lech Walesa - at least according to Brymora.

In Chopin's day, Poland was partitioned by Russia, Prussia and Austria and did not exist as a state. In 1830, soon after Chopin embarked on a tour of Europe, an uprising broke out in Warsaw against its Russian rulers. It was put down with brutality, and a period of Russian repression followed that sent many other Polish artists into exile.

Chopin never returned mainly because it would have been ``regarded as a betrayal of the others who were in exile,'' Zamoyski said. ``Many of them couldn't return without facing prison - or worse, death.''

Poles hear in his music a deep nostalgia for his homeland, and stress the Polish elements in his oeuvre - particularly in his Polonaises and Mazurkas, styles rooted in Polish folk music.

Halina Goldberg, author of ``Music in Chopin's Warsaw,'' said that even before Chopin's death in 1849, Poles turned to his art to preserve a sense of their nationhood.

But others have also claimed him - Germans have said his music falls into the tradition of German Romanticism; Russians call him a Slavic genius. ``There is always a question of how much Polishness is in his music,'' Goldberg, a music professor at Indiana University said. ``Much of it is in the ear of the beholder.''

Certainly Nazi Germany, which occupied Poland during World War II, heard something subversive and banned it. The Nazis were clearly aware of what German composer Robert Schumann, also born in 1810, called Chopin's ``cannons hidden beneath flowers.''

``As Chopin was one of the rallying points of Polish identity, it was just one more thing that needed to be forbidden and destroyed,'' Zamoyski said.

After his death, Chopin was eulogized movingly by the Polish poet Cyprian Kamil Norwid, who wrote that: ``In the crystal of his own harmony he gathered the tears of the Polish people strewn over the fields, and placed them as the diamond of beauty in the diadem of humanity.''

Now that Poland is again independent, it can savor that beauty without the tears.

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