Dick Francis was one of the most successful post-war National hunt jockeys. The winner of over 350 races, he was champion jockey in 1953/1954 and rode for HM Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. Following his retirement from the saddle he wrote forty-three bestselling novels, which earned him many prestigious awards, and in 1998 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He died in February 2010 at the age of eighty-nine.