Silks, Soaks and Certainties
by
Bob Butchers
The tale of a horse racing family by the original ‘Newsboy’
This light-hearted look at the racing scene, illustrated with many pictures, will appeal to all who are racing ‘buffs’ and many who are not. The tale of a family whose links with racing have spanned more than a century is packed with many wonderfully evocative accounts of incidents and characters of yesteryear. Some of the activities would, to say the least, be frowned on today.
Bob Butchers was born at Lewes in Sussex into a family that had racing in the blood. Bob’s grandfather was a trainer and his father Leslie and uncle Don were both riders, the latter subsequently becoming a well known trainer himself. Although he rode in his first hurdle race soon after his sixteenth birthday, Bob did not have the full backing of his immediate family in his ambition to be a jockey, and the final ‘nail in the coffin’ was probably his war time call-up when he was eighteen. After the war the author, a little reluctantly but probably wisely, earned his living by writing about horses as a racing correspondent instead of riding them. Bob was the original Newsboy on the Daily Mirror and filled that post with distinction for almost 39 years. This, coupled with his family background, gave him a deep knowledge of what went on behind the scenes in racing and have provided him with a fund of stories which he shares with us in this book. Now in his eighties, he and his wife Marian live in Suffolk. His hobbies are D.I.Y. and ‘keeping active’, and he still follows the racing scene.
This book contains about 90 black and white illustrations
ISBN: 978-1-906302-04-7
PRICE: £18.75 (plus P & P £3.00 UK, £4.00 EU, £6.50 RoW)
Blenheim Press Ltd
Codicote Innovation Centre, St Albans Road, Codicote,
Herts SG4 8WH
