'the racing man's bedside book'. A review, of sorts.

​You might think Julian Bedford, the complier of ‘The Racing Man’s Bedside Books’ took the easy route to publication by collating the work of famous others. Not so. Most works of fiction, anyway, based in the world of horse racing are, on average, not very good. I have contributed to the lack-lustre genre myself. ‘Going To The Last’, a collection of horse racing short stories, by K.D.Knight. Competitively priced. 
Bad form, I know, plugging one’s own efforts while providing a critique of someone’s better quality book, yet it’s a cut-throat world and Mr. Bedford would do the same for me, and as no one visits this site on a regular basis, who is to know?
Julian Bedford’s book is not new, though my copy is pristine, and was published in 2004. Two writers at the opposite end of the literary spectrum feature several times, the legendary Jeffrey Bernard and the esteemed Damon Runyon. No compendium of racing fiction can ever be published without contributions from the work of Runyon; he made his fortune writing about down-at-heel characters that inhabited U.S. racetracks. I am surprised Coolmore is yet to name one of their blue-bloods in his honour.
The book is a mingling of works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. The poetry provided by dignitaries of the genre of no less esteem than John Betjeman, Siegfried Sassoon and Adam Lindsay-Gordon. Betjeman’s poem is a eulogy to Upper Lambourne, a surprise to me if not to the better educated amongst you.
What makes this a book a must-have for anyone interested in horse racing, and for the same reason would make a good gift for anyone who has expressed a growing interest in the sport, is the broad sweep of equine topics to be found. The first story, appropriately, is a letter, written in 1703, from one brother to another on the proposed sea-trip of the now famous Darley Arabian, the forefather of the pedigrees of so many top-class horses around the world.
To be found in the ‘Bedside Book’ are excerpts from the Timeform Annual, on St.Paddy, Anthony Trollope (his understanding of the sport caught me by surprise), racing luminaries from long ago such as Marcus Marsh, George Lambton, the Earl of Roseberry and, again surprisingly, Benjamin Disraeli and racing men better known to the present-day reader, John Hislop, obviously writing about Brigadier Gerard, the peerless David Ashforth, Jack Leach and Hugh McIlvanney.
More unexpected contributions are from Philip Larkin, Robert Morley, Evelyn Waugh and Daniel Defoe.
A similar book today, if the works of Runyon and alike were precluded, would be more difficult to collate as horses in general and horse racing in particular rarely cross paths with modern living. Celebrities may be seen at Royal Ascot or Goodwood but they are not there for the racing. They are there to be seen, to be seen with the ‘right people’ and on many occasions are invited to the racecourse by either the racecourse marketing arm or by a racing-orientated friend and are not there through a love of the sport. Perhaps that has always been true.
Even in the 60’s the connection between horse racing and the public was a secure link back into the history of a country when Parliament recessed so politicians could attend the Epsom Derby, when Prime Ministers not only owned racehorses in training but large studs, also. To own a racehorse was to display your association with the social elite. How times change!
Today, it is not even a debate on whether the sport will ever again return to its halcyon days but one of ‘will the sport survive for many more years’. Damon Runyon, George Lambton or Jeffrey Bernard would never have believed the present-day narrative of Animal Rights Activists or that the sport had anything but a never-ending future of glory and controversy. Horse racing was a sport of great hope for every sector of society. For the wealthy owner the hope of celebrating a Derby winner was on the same level as the hope of the punter to one day to win big and alter his social status from working to middle-class. Racing people live on hope. Hope is the driving force for stable staff to ride out in the rain and cold, for trainers setting off on along journey to the races, the punter to study form, for breeders to keep investing in stallion fees and hope is very much on the minds of those people financially fortunate to be able to own a racehorse.
It is important that books similar to Julian Bedford’s ‘Bedtime Book’ continue to be published as the stories, whether pure fiction or based in truth and reality, document the days when horse racing was both relevant and inspirational, without any stigma attached. On the reverse side of the coin, a modern-day version of this book would be unlikely to have contributions from supporters of the sport from the world of literature or from the world of politics or indeed any prime minister since Sir Winston Churchill.