John Oaksey is the archetypal English gentleman. He is a sweetheart, a star, the bravest of the brave, funny and kind: the only person who will disagree with this is himself. His modesty is complete, his successes are never his, the credit always goes elsewhere, to the horses mostly, or to his friends, his colleagues, his wives, his parents, his opponents, to luck. Wherever, but never to him.
Through these lenses so tinted with generosity as to make them sometimes almost opaque, we are treated to an account of his life, which has been a series of successes, triumphs over adversity and victories in many fields. He tries to pretend otherwise, but this is a rare failure.
Horse-racing dominates the story as it has dominated Oaksey’s life. The horses come first, indeed his affection for them is almost anthropomorphic, but not quite.
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