Dick Francis Critical Essay | Critical Review by Denis Pitts

SOURCE: "Very Yoff-Yoff," in Punch Weekly, Vol. 291, October 15, 1986, p. 55.

In the following review, Pitts criticizes Francis's Bolt for being snobbish and implausible.

My favourite jump-jockey is a minute little fellow with a face like a pruned-up parrot and a voice to match. He's so small that he has to have a leg up on to the barstool; but when he gets there, he's good for many a yarn.

There was the drunken starter at Chepstow who fell off his stand and took off on the favourite's rump; and the semi-delirious rider who took advantage of a St. John's Ambulance lady in the back of a blood-wagon at Newton Abbot (and pleaded concussion); or the desolate, newly-gelded favourite who stopped to graze in a steeplechase at Fontwell.

He retired at the end of last season and the beer which he once declined, has given him a tiny,...
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