Felix Francis
CONVERSATIONS round the breakfast table in the Francis household weren’t typical family fare.
“Someone would ask, ‘How much pressure is required to strangle someone?’ or ‘Could Sid Halley survive the night with a bullet in his head?’ - never who was doing the school run,” says Dick Francis’ son Felix, when we meet in Newmarket, where he is publicising his new book, Iced. “I was growing up in the greatest fiction factory in the world.”
Felix has taken over the mantle of writing the Dick Francis novels - no small task given that when his father switched from being a champion jump jockey, he became one the most famous thriller writers in the world, with global sales in excess of 90 million.
It all began with the mortifying collapse of The Queen Mother’s Devon Loch as he was galloping to what looked like certain victory in the 1956 Grand National. For those who don’t know the story, Devon Loch was leading
