It Comes Up Mud (Damon Runyon), Educated Evans (Edgar Wallace) and Neck or Nothing (John Welcome)
It Comes Up Mud has a blend of characters and emotions familiar to most racetrackers. It should be on the undergraduate syllabus for both English and Psychology. I read it when I was young and it left me with a healthy distrust of women who neither bet, nor own a horse, and a lifelong affection for horses who do not let you down when the going turns soft.
I also find the Educated Evans stories cheering when gloom is rapping at the door. Written at a similar time to the above by the remarkably prolific Edgar Wallace, who rose from selling newspapers on a street corner to editing the very publication. A man with an unimpeachable sense of priorities, he spent the vast majority of his considerable income on training fees and betting. They are long overdue a fresh and faithful television treatment.
Neck or Nothing is the story of the most remarkably durable horse Sceptre and the strata of society around her. The campaign she was subjected to is astonishing by contemporary standards. We live in an age when preserving a string of number ones beside a top horse has replaced the wild ambitions of egomaniac owners to conquer new peaks. This may be better for the horse, but it is certainly to the long-term detriment of the sport.
If you would like to share your favourite racing book with us, please email emmaberry@thetdn.com.
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