at Leopardstown races, for which I must thank Jane Davies, a glorious dinner in the evening given by J. P. and Noreen McManus and a fascinating and illuminating Cheltenham Preview at the Shelbourne Hotel hosted by Betchronicle the following night. All this provided terrific copy for the book. I cannot begin to express my thanks enough to Liz and Jacques.
Another Glamazon is Carey Buckler, daughter of trainer Bob Buckler, who came for a couple of days’ work experience and ended up regaling me with marvellous tales about everyone in racing. Another was Charlotte Kinchin, who after waitressing at the Pheasant Inn, riding out and driving round trainers, was a mine of glorious gossip.
Hospitality in jump racing is Olympian. Nothing lifts the spirits on a bitterly cold winter’s day like a Bull Shot or a glass of champagne in a warm box. I am, therefore, eternally grateful to my dear former editor Veronica Wadley and her husband Tom Bower, John Boyle of Boyle Sports, the team from Betchronicle, Harriet Collins at Johnno Spencer Consultancy, John Woodhatch of Equine Effects, and Emma Jesson the weather queen.
Libelling humans is to be avoided in books, and even worse is to libel a horse. So I tried very hard, particularly with badly behaved horses, not to give them names that had been used before. Huge thanks therefore to Rachel Andrews and Emma Day at Weatherbys and Jo Saunders for checking these names for me and I hope none has slipped through the net.
There is quite a lot of sex in Jump! – some of it equine. I am therefore most grateful to John Sharp of Weatherbys’ stud department for his advice and to Ali Rea for arranging a miraculous visit to the Darley Stud in Newmarket. Here Richard Knight took me on an exhilarating tour of the breeding yards and the stables, where I was thrilled to meet the mighty New Approach.
I would also like to thank Ed Sackville, an ace bloodstock agent, Jane Mead and Corrin Wood who told me about rearing thoroughbred foals. My neighbour, Penny Smith, a Highland pony breeder, whose mares and foals and visiting stallions across the valley are a constant joy, waxed lyrical on the equine delights of ‘stolen service’.
Most of the people who helped me in the writing of the book are experts in their field, but as Jump! is fiction I’m afraid I only followed their advice when it suited my plot. My woman jockey, for example, breaks the rules by remounting in a point-to-point around 2005 and, as I believe in miracles, criminally maltreated horses recover and win big races.
And talking of miracles it would be difficult to overstate my admiration for the racing press, who file such immaculate, exciting and poetic copy at such lightning speed. Icons include Brough Scott, Marcus Armytage, Alan Lee, Julian Muscat, Charlie Brooks, Jonathan Powell, Colin Mackenzie, Marcus Townend, Alastair Down, Andrew Longmore, Robin Oakley, the great revered John Oaksey and Ivor Herbert, and the late lamented Clement Freud.
The Racing Post is another miracle, as readable as it is all-embracing. I am so grateful to its editor, Bruce Millington, and associate editor, another greyhound lover, Howard Wright. Horse and Hound frequently inspired me and one of the bonuses of being an owner has been the monthly arrival of Thoroughbred Owner and Breeder, which is as sparky and as beautiful to look at as the horses it features.
Normally I write in a gazebo at the bottom of the garden, but I abandoned this for the top of the house so I could watch racing coverage on Channel 4, the BBC and the glorious At The Races while I worked. I must thank all three for the beauty, information and entertainment of their programmes and would express particular gratitude to the great John and Booby McCririck, Richard Pitman, Robert Cooper (who loves Material World), Jim McGrath, Mike Cattermole who took me up to the commentary box at Cheltenham, Clare Balding, Johnnie Francome, Matt Chapman, Sean Boyce, Alice Plunkett, Luke Harvey, Nick Luck and the irrepressible Derek Thompson.
Jump! is largely based in a Cotswold village called Willowwood, which in a way resembles our lovely village of Bisley, which has a beautiful church, a great school and a golden stone high street. No one in the story, however, is based on any living person and any similarities are purely coincidental, unless the person is so famous, like John McCririck, that he appears as himself.
Many other people helped me with Jump! Our own delightful vicar,