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I think the first book I read about racing was a biography or autobiography of Alex Bird, when I was about 25. That’s quite bad isn’t it – not being able to remember whether a book is a biography or autobiography?
In the early 90s I came across the (JA?) Allen’s Horsemen’s Bookshop in the Victoria area. It was quite useful – you could buy Paris Turf before you travelled over. The first book I bought there was Sprint Handicapping Explained, by Adams. I immediately started making my own handicap ratings. I’d buy 8" by 5" I think file cards from WH Smiths at £2 per 100, and keep them in file boxes, alphabeticised, 1 card per horse. 3yos and 2yos were separate colours from the 4yos+.
I think I’ve read all the main Beyer books except My $50,000 Year, but I might have read that one as well. Was that the one where he travelled around the world, having a go without much success at betting in Australia and at Cheltenham? The Winning Horseplayer, Beyer On Speed and Picking Winners.
I’ve also read a couple of books by Quinn and Quinlan [edit: actually Quirin – see, I said I get them mixed up.], but I get them mixed up.
I really liked Charles Carroll’s book about Handicapping Speed in Quarter Horses.
I’ve read Betting For A Living, and Mordin On Time , but I haven’t got around to reading Mordin’s other books.
That’s just about all the books I have read, apart from a couple of raceform pamphlets.
All my books were left in London, and though I resent having to re-buy any of the above, I have just ordered three books from Amazon. I find that reading books about racing provides me with a lot of zeal and enthusiasm.
Which books would you recommend, or which books have influenced and informed your betting? Or are they so good that you don’t want other people to read them?
Just for the record the 3 books that I have ordered are
"Betting Maidens and 2-Year-Olds: Analytical Approach to Future Winners (Elements of Handicapping)"
Dan Illman; Paperback; £9.27
Okay, this seems to be American, and maybe I would have been better off buying Gibby’s book/pamphlet"The Tail End System"
Ross Newton; Paperback; £9.09
Seems to be about betting longshots in NH races"Bet with the Best 2: Longshots"
Andrew Beyer; Hardcover; £19.12
Actually a compilation of articles by about a dozen different US handicappers.
- Total Posts 17716
Good post Gerald,
I am trying to get together a nice book collection and thinking of spending a fair bit from here http://www.browzers.co.uk/index.htm. Think i’ll have a look at buying those bookes you mentioned but I try stay clear from anything concerning U.S racing.
Gosh, somewhere to buy Van Der Wheil related products! The World may never be the same place again.
Desert Orchid’s Biography by Richard Burridge I couldn’t bear to put down. Brilliant Read.
I forgot to mention that I also read Stewart Simpson’s Always Back Winners and Alan Potts’ Against The Crowd in the ’90s.
I also read Clive Holt’s book when I was staying at someone else’s house a couple of years ago.
That browzers site also has Betting The Timeform Way, £10. I wonder who’ll be first to snap it up?
The first racing book I can remember reading was about the hunter chaser from the 60s, Baulking Green. It was amongst a collection of books a schoolfriend passed on to me from his father who worked in Michael Pope’s yard at Streatley.
Rob
Gerald,
I have collected many racing books over the years, and some I would recommend are as follows:-
The Druids Lodge Confederacy….This is difficult to get hold of, but well worth the effort. All about the Druids Lodge Stable on Salisbury plain in the early 1900’s. They were responsible for possibly the biggest coup in racing history, 15 million in todays terms, fascinating.
A biography of Fred Archer by John Welcome. Probably, one of the saddest tales of an iconic sporting hero.
A couple of books by Jamie Reid, Emperors of the Turf, and another I cannot remember. Very well researched.
Anyway, a few to consider. Hope this helps.
Cheers,
LlanrumneyBoy
Yes, I think I have read about the Druid’s Lodge in a Faber compilation. Also had a bit about Sceptre in it.
That reminds me that I have also read George Lambton’s Men and Horses I Have Known (title might be slightly inaccurate).
That reminds me that I have also read George Lambton’s Men and Horses I Have Known (title might be slightly inaccurate).
That is the correct title, and it’s a superb book, one of the best ever, ranking alongside Seabiscuit (Laura Hillenbrand), Breeding The Racehorse (Federico Tesio) and Sods I Have Cut On The Turf (Jack Leach).
Books about punting are my thing, Gerald.
Biographies, jockeys tales and venerations of our equine heroes are not really for me, bar Simon Barnes’ excellent book exploring his year with John Dunlop (I forget the title) and Michael Seely’s superb Willie Carson biography (with a huge amount on Unfuwain, Nashwan – all the great Sheikh Hamdan horses – Neil Graham, Marcus Tregoning, Major Hern and the shameful excision of the latter as a royal handler by the vindictive Lord Carnarvon).
Nor are books by the US number crunchers, speed freaks and dosage speculators. I like a book to have artistic and literary merit – a rarity in horse racing. Even old, oafish football is developing a pantheon to exceed our efforts.
Gerald, if you can get hold of it,
A Licence to Print Money
by Jamie Reid is as good a book written about horse race betting as any in the last thirty years. My favourite racing book and (possibly) the best written..
Speaking of which, you’ve read the cultish
Always Back Winners
by Stewart Simpson which is just magnificent and must have inspired hundreds of people to leave the office and the production line behind in favour of life on the racecourse.
You like your US racing and a book I would recommend is
Horseplayers
by Scott McClelland: a work of great insight and joy (Cav has also read and recommended this one).
Both of Alan’s very readable books have historic merit, as do Mark Coton’s (the father of the "V" word). There is a tasty, readable little potboiler called
"Dark Secrets of the Turf"
written by an academic called John White which is most underrated and virtually never mentioned.
It’s noticeable that hasn’t been an interesting book on gambling on horse racing – bar Nevvo’s brace of Marmite hagiographies – in a decade.
For anyone interested in all facets of racing, I’d highly recommend a book called The Sport Of Kings written by Rebecca Cassidy. She was (and is) an anthropologist and the book is based on her Ph D thesis. She spent time in Newmarket working in a stable, at a stud and in a betting shop, as well as talking to breeders, bloodstock agents, sales companies, owners, trainers and punters.
I met her as part of her study, when she spent a day at the races with me watching me bet and talking about gambling. I’m not spared in the final book!
It’s a fascinating view of our closed world through the eyes of an outsider and it includes some priceless quotes taken from other sources. Try this one :
"There’s no difference between a woman and a mare, except that a mare is more agreeable. The mare is a self contained foaling unit and nursery, and that’s all a woman would be if she didn’t talk so much."
Desert Orchid’s Biography by Richard Burridge I couldn’t bear to put down. Brilliant Read.
My pal once told me that he had the Moscow Flyer auto-biography. He was a damn clever horse eh!
The Druids Lodge Confederacy….This is difficult to get hold of, but well worth the effort. All about the Druids Lodge Stable on Salisbury plain in the early 1900’s. They were responsible for possibly the biggest coup in racing history, 15 million in todays terms, fascinating.
A biography of Fred Archer by John Welcome. Probably, one of the saddest tales of an iconic sporting hero.
A couple of books by Jamie Reid, Emperors of the Turf, and another I cannot remember. Very well researched.
Some excellent choices there, I’ve long been meaning to read all of those. I ordered the Robert Sangster book Horsetrader:The Rise And Fall Of the Sport Of Kings and my first Timeform Annual (Racehorses 2008) during the week, look forward to getting stuck into those when I’m home next week.
Regarding The Druids Lodge Book doesn’t this just set it up beautifully…..
The Confederacy was an eclectic bunch. It was headed by Percy Cunliffe, an Old Etonian gold speculator who weighed in at more than twenty stones and ‘was not a man much given to smiling’. The man responsible for ‘planking’ the money down was Wilfred Bagwell Purefry. Called ‘Pure’ by his friends, he collected rare orchids, invested heavily in music hall, bred racehorses and was a director of the Autostrop Safety Razor company, a competitor of Gillette. The funds were fronted by Captain Frank Forester, a dedicated huntsman who was ‘a rather terrifying man in the early stages of a run’. And Edward Wigan, a small, extremely uncommunicative man, with a fondness for milk puddings, who pronounced the word coup as ‘cowp’.
Superb
Maxilon
"It’s noticeable that hasn’t been an interesting book on gambling on horse racing – bar Nevvo’s brace of Marmite hagiographies – in a decade."
"Interesting" is of course not a quality of a publication per se, but a matter of the relationship between the reader’s mind and what is read.
Amusement, thrills, delight at an author’s ability to describe, etc. are all ways in which time spent reading can be repaid positively. But in respect of books on betting on horses arguably the most important is whether they provide the reader with insight which changes the way he or she bets.
From this last, specific, perspective, I agree with you but would go further and not make your exceptions – I’ve read nothing in the last ten years of any worth. Indeed, looking back over the thirty plus years I’ve been interested in backing horses, there has only been one book which has changed the way I bet, a compilation of letters and articles written under the pseudonym Che Van der Wheil, originally published in the Sporting Chronicle Handicap Book, and brought together in 1993 under the title "The Golden Years of Van der Wheil".
Come Fly with the Butterfly – John Mort Green
seems to have achieved near-legendary status in the ‘how to bet’ lexicon, probably because it’s long out of print and now near-impossible to find: a colourful account of a chauffeur-driven Savile Row suited ’60s track gambler guaranteed to attract the youthful, impressionable wannabee, but nonetheless containing some useful – if nowadays obvious – nuggets.
Be A Successful Punter – Clive Holt
(Fineform) Still in my opinion the best introduction to the vagaries of form study built on the foundations of a simple though robust rating system.
It’s noticeable that hasn’t been an interesting book on gambling on horse racing – bar Nevvo’s brace of Marmite hagiographies – in a decade.
Very good
A prescient point: in my view there’s very little new that can be added to the Coton, Holt, Mordin, Potts, Timeform etc etc tomes of the 80s and 90s. The advent of tax-free betting and Exchanges may result in the nature of the betting markets fluctuating and subtly changing but the Holy Commandments remain as carved in tablets of stone by said authors.Other than gambling books
A Long Time Gone – Chris Pitt
is one of the most delightful books I’ve had the pleasure to read on any subject: a real labour of love and fastidiously researched
If like me you empathise with the intellectual, tortured, hypocritical and complex then
Bull: the Biography – Howard Wright
is a must read
Other than gambling books
A Long Time Gone – Chris Pitt
is one of the most delightful books I’ve had the pleasure to read on any subject: a real labour of love and fastidiously researched
(NAP)
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
I like a book to have artistic and literary merit – a rarity in horse racing.
…Until such time as the collective works of Drone, Andrew Hughes and yourself are committed to print, that is. I know I’d part with the hard-earned for one of those.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
A prescient point: in my view there’s very little new that can be added to the Coton, Holt, Mordin, Potts, Timeform etc etc tomes of the 80s and 90s. The advent of tax-free betting and Exchanges may result in the nature of the betting markets fluctuating and subtly changing but the Holy Commandments remain as carved in tablets of stone by said authors.
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