Peter Oborne
Not Lonely Cattle Sheds
A Year at the Races
By Jane Smiley
Faber & Faber 289pp £12.99 order from our bookshop
The British Stable
By Giles Worsley
Yale University Press 320pp £45 order from our bookshop
FOR SOME REASON horse racing has a less distinguished literature than other great sports, for instance cricket or even Association Football. Writers have mainly been attracted to the seedier side of the game, but few – Damon Runyon is the notable exception – have really risen to the occasion. There is nothing in racing literature to match the incomparable R S Surtees, or for that matter Trollope, on the hunting field.
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