From glorious memories to grim thrillers, here are the best racing reads of 2023 - and ideal Christmas gifts

Five fabulous books that would be perfect for any racing fan's Christmas stocking

Nicky Henderson and the horses that shaped a career of sympathy and genius

Is it any wonder that, when presented with the rather arbitrary challenge of narrowing his entire, extraordinary life down to just 12 horses, Nicky Henderson refused. Given that he's been training since God was in short trousers, has done pretty much all there is for a trainer to do in British jumps racing and could probably come up with a list of 12 special horses every year, he might well have requested more sequels and prequels than Star Wars to accommodate the necessary number.

Kate Johnson, author of Nicky Henderson: My Life in 12 Horses, neatly sidestepped the great man's objections by shoehorning a couple of extra JP McManus horses into the Binocular chapter – thereby satisfying both her own brief and Henderson's misgivings – but it's a subterfuge that highlights the challenge of the genre: when even your principal subject is on your case, just imagine how the reading public are going to react when they rumble that their personal favourites are missing from the roster.

I'm aghast, for example, that there's no Shishkin, except in passing; all seven Triumph Hurdle winners have been overlooked; Brown Windsor and Stormyfairweather are both absent, despite their status as Cathcart winners from an age when backing Nicky's runners in the Cathcart was a great festival 'getting out' strategy; and, scandalously, Fondmort doesn't get a look-in. I could go on, and I probably will, but I mention it only to clamber over the tricky first obstacle that the author of a book like this has to negotiate.

In her own defence, Johnson would no doubt point out that every chapter is devoted to a worthy recipient of her attention, and the fact that several of them are very much 'non-champions' is not something she has to apologise for. This is not, after all, a book about the best horses Henderson has trained; rather an affectionate chronicle of the ones that have shaped his life in racing, and that's a very different thing.

The name Happy Warrior, for example, may cause barely a ripple of recognition beyond the Henderson breakfast table, but the giant grey was the young rider's first winner and his initiation into the abusive hurly-burly of race-riding, where Old Etonian amateurs were regarded by their professional colleagues as more of a hindrance than an asset, especially when they were winning.

Happy Warrior was a 21st birthday present – which immediately places us in a certain social setting – and very much a family horse who spurs emotional memories of a happy childhood and the trainer's beloved parents. If his chapter gets a bit 'Horse and Hound', it's only because it's appropriate – and because Johnson has long been a Horse and Hound contributor. This, as you'll see, is a book that's as much about human emotion as it is about racing achievement, and that's no kind of a criticism. As one of its fans – another H&H person, in case you were wondering – suggests by way of recommendation: "I'd recommend it to anyone who has ever loved an animal".

That on its own, though, would be to ignore many of the book's other great strengths, which is that while it does a fine job of taking us on a whistle-stop tour of Henderson's magnificent career – from See You Then's three Champion Hurdles to the glories of Sprinter Sacre, via the unexplored backwaters of Caracciola and Zongalero – it often tells us as much about the horses, their minds and bodies, psyches and idiosyncrasies, as it does about the trainer himself.

Not that Henderson the man is a bit-part in this drama. The nub of it all is the way in which this remarkable man has managed to balance the economics of running a racing yard for so long with the need to entertain owners and the essential task of understanding and preserving the most fragile of equine athletes, given their seeming lack of instinct to preserve themselves.

The answer is that the trainer is instinctively good at all of it. He's a people person with a deep-rooted love of horses, who surrounds himself with the best of both and as a result has kept a yard full of mostly happy owners and often brilliant horses for many decades.

This is a book which recognises that such genius, while often natural, is never simple. Henderson may make it look as though it comes easy, but there's plenty going on beneath the surface.

Nicky Henderson: My Life in 12 Horses, by Kate Johnson, is published by Pitch Publishing (£19.99) – click here to buy now
Peter Thomas

Time to reflect on a memorable year with our Annual

It is a rare occurrence indeed when a racing figure is able to transcend the sport but few have managed to scale the heights and reap the rewards of their efforts in such imperious fashion as Frankie Dettori. 

After announcing his retirement almost 12 months ago, the legendary jockey set off on a farewell tour but found the delights of 2023 too good to give up, making the surprise decision to continue riding in the US just nine days before what was billed as his final appearance on British Champions Day. 

It is not difficult to see why Dettori has stuck around. While his name was already etched into racing folklore, this year provided a renaissance for the 52-year-old and there is no-one more fitting to grace the front cover of the latest Racing Post Annual. 

The 13th edition of the end-of-year highlights reel is once more packed with insight from racing's top writers, and it is five-time Sports Writer of the Year Paul Hayward who reflects on Dettori's sensational summer and place among the country's biggest sporting icons. 

Hayward writes: "Where does he stand in the pantheon of British sport? With the greatest, surely, for his talent, big-stage temperament and longevity. You could place him on a legends' shelf with Andy Murray, Ben Stokes, Nick Faldo, Lewis Hamilton, Steve Redgrave, Jessica Ennis-Hill and the others. This isn't idle praise."

Four Royal Ascot victories, two Classic triumphs and an Ebor success are among the plaudits claimed by Dettori in 2023, signed off by Lee Mottershead's retelling of the jockey's final hurrah on King Of Steel at Ascot. 

Mottershead also charts the climb of the only horse to rival Dettori's stardom this year in Constitution Hill, whose sublime Champion Hurdle triumph cemented his position as one of the best hurdlers to have raced in Britain.  

"It is debatable whether a better horse has ever won it," Mottershead writes of the Cheltenham Festival victory. "There was a collective desire that he would put on a show, live up to the hype and fuel the superlatives. He did all that and more."

Irish jumps stars are given their own time to shine in this 208-page edition, with Gold Cup winner Galopin Des Champs, hurdling legend Honeysuckle and the brilliant Energumene among those honoured for their exploits last season. 

Images from award-winning photographers Edward Whitaker and Patrick McCann capture the year's greatest moments, with a wide shot of the closing stages of the Grand National serving as an essential backdrop to editor Nick Pulford's retelling of Corach Rambler's triumph in April. With the race mired in controversy before the tape went up, the annual concludes with a fascinating inside story on the animal rights protests told by leading figures involved that day. 

Before reaching those final pages, however, there are plenty more stories of big-race glory. Auguste Rodin, Paddington and Continuous showcase the continued prowess of Ballydoyle, while Lewis Porteous pens the tale of Mostahdaf, who was another beneficiary of Dettori's whirlwind year when landing the Juddmonte International in August. 

The dazzling Arc winner Ace Impact, the rags-to-riches tale of Shaquille and the resurgence of Trueshan are some of the highlights and the annual also pays tribute to the human stars who have bowed out this year, including Davy Russell, Tom Scudamore and Paul Hanagan. 

As cover star Dettori serves to remind us, a lot can change in a year. Thankfully the enjoyable familiarity of the Racing Post Annual remains a welcome constant.

The Racing Post Annual 2024, edited by Nick Pulford, is published by Pitch Publishing (£19.99) - click here to buy now
Catherine Macrae

Kick The Latch by Kathryn Scanlan

A relentless search for hope in the bottom of racing's barrel

Racing in literature is, by and large, an uplifting and edifying affair in which, although hardship and injustice may rear their collective ugly head from time to time, the story will mostly make its way towards the twin ideals of glory and redemption.

It's unlikely Enid Bagnold set out with the intention of making National Velvet a gritty expose of the seamy underbelly of jump racing, or that Laura Hillenbrand was attracted to the tale of Seabiscuit by any darkness that may have beset the American turf in the 1930s. These were narratives founded upon the inspirational power of sport and its capacity to give the underdog their day in the sun. It would be unwise to approach Kick The Latch with any similar expectations.

Kathryn Scanlan's horseracing story, as told in the blunt and unflinching words of Midwestern trainer Sonia, is more a smudged portrait of human endurance than a celebration of achievement against the odds. Any humour here is as dark as it is welcome. Such achievement as there is lies in refusing to be beaten down by mindless violence, inhumanity and social inequity while continuing to pursue a dream that, even at its most fulfilling, seems to offer not much more than tiny hillocks of satisfaction in an unforgiving landscape.

Not that Sonia expects a great deal more from her life, as it unfolds in tiny snippets of chapters, from the day in 1962 when she was "born with a dislocated hip" and told she would never walk. From this moment on, her life is an unequal struggle, recounted in language as sparse and bleak as an Iowa winter as she sustains herself, traipsing from yard to yard, job to job, in the dwindling hope she might one day encounter people above her in the food chain who aren't a source of grave disappointment.

Racing doesn't come out of it well and neither do many racing people, but let's make no mistake, this is the kind of racing that's left after the bottom of the barrel has been scraped a few times by folk who are trying to scratch a living.

It's all pretty ugly and desperate, but underpinning the whole structure is hope, however flimsy. There are good people out there, if you're lucky enough to stumble across them, and racing has its share, but you'll need something to sustain you while you're looking for them.

Sonia is one of the good ones, an uncomplaining friend to her horses, unable to shake the habit that might finally give her the good life she deserves. And so she tells her story, brutal and hopeful by turns, but never coloured by the romance of racing. She won't be winning the Grand National, played by Elizabeth Taylor, but she may survive the ordeal, which would be a victory in itself.

Kick The Latch is a relentless, occasionally uplifting, search for faith at the impoverished end of a racing world where faith often seems to make little sense. Dig deep into it, but don't expect to come away from it feeling a million dollars.

Kick The Latch by Kathyrn Scanlan is published by Daunt Books (£9.99)
Peter Thomas

Racing's history is not as well preserved as it might be – but one writer is on a mission to put that right

You know L'Escargot, of course you do. He won back-to-back Gold Cups half a century ago and then won a Grand National at the end of his career; no horse since has managed to win both races. 

He was also "the horse that foiled Red Rum" and this is the billing he gets on the cover of David Owen's latest book, an impressively detailed recounting of L'Escargot's life. 

Owen is not the kind of biographer to produce entire conversations from bygone decades as if he'd been scribbling shorthand in a corner but he has such a firm grasp of time and place he makes you feel he was there to see the two-year-old chestnut arriving at Jimmy Brogan's place with the bright red barn in the spring of 1965.

If you know Owen's work, it's probably because you read Foinavon, his much-praised book about the pile-up in the 1967 National and the unbelievably lucky connections who found the prize falling in their laps. He's covered a range of sports but the success of Foinavon has brought him back to racing a decade later and lucky us because I can't imagine many others could have done such a fine job of parading L'Escargot in front of us, or could have got such a book published once they had put it together.

Thanks to Owen, we get to find out how well we know the story of Dan Moore's chaser with the big, floppy ears, so expressive of mood. The answer, in my case, turned out to be hardly at all.

Of course we remember that horses were campaigned differently in those days, more aggressively. Still, it stunned me to learn that, at the height of his career, L'Escargot was repeatedly sent across the Atlantic to race in the US. He even won there, at Belmont in the summer of 1969, fully three months after lining up in the Champion Hurdle.

What a horse he was, having been vigorously campaigned all his career, to hold his form to the age of 12 and finally get the better of the best Aintree horse there ever was, hacking up by 15 lengths in the National of 1975. Owen establishes at an early stage that Aintree was, for decades, a frustrating place for Moore and owner Raymond Guest, so that their star's valedictory triumph may be imagined to have had a healing quality. 

Racing's history is not as well preserved as a fan might wish. Let's hope Owen continues his painstaking labours in this field, immortalising one equine great at a time.

No Snail by David Owen, £20, published by Fairfield Books
Chris Cook

Noir thriller brings home brutal lessons of botched gambling laws

"You're a big man, but you're in bad shape. With me it's a full-time job. Now behave yourself." It's one for the film buffs, a quote that every self-respecting cinephile should know off by heart. I'm sure you've all got it.

That's right: Michael Caine as Jack Carter in the 1971 noir classic Get Carter. It's the scene where the shady London gangster Caine, having travelled north to the wilds of Newcastle to find out the truth about his brother's death, finds himself in a lawless urban landscape comprising what director Mike Hodges described as "the sleaziness and corruption festering in the city's underbelly".

Caine arrives by train at Newcastle Central, to the background of a newspaper headline reading 'Gaming War Rocks City', and his quest finally brings him to a meeting with the unscrupulous Cliff Brumby, who fancies his chances against the younger, fitter man but ends up being flung off the top of a brutalist multi-storey car park, itself a symbol of the cronyism and double-dealing that had infected the region ever since the introduction of Britain's well-intentioned but clumsy 1960 Betting and Gaming Act had sucked all sorts of dodgy money into a newly created void.

In film noir as in real life, mobsters and Mafiosi flooded the country's deregulated clubs and nightspots with gaming machines, constantly searching for fertile new markets in a country fresh out of post-war austerity. Of course, with financial opportunity came greed, rivalry and all manner of unpleasantness, which is where Bandit Country comes in.

It's hard to imagine that even such a classy operator as Jamie Reid (author of the award-winning Doped, the masterful saga of racehorse nobbling in the 1960s) could have timed his latest book to coincide with the furore surrounding the Gambling Commission's clumsy attempts to impose heavy-handed restrictions on the nation's gamblers, but by hook or by crook he's managed it, in a story that channels the hard-edged realism of Get Carter into a salutary thriller.

Organised crime in the US had made a nice living out of rigged slot machines for a good while, but it was now in need of new markets for its wares, and Londoner Vincent Luvaglio, with his less unsavoury brother Michael, was their man, although a run-in with the Kray twins persuaded him that the provinces, with all their untapped potential, and Newcastle in particular, would be a good place to relocate his seedy empire.

So begins a real-life mobster tale that mines the same gritty, industrial and uncompromising seam as Hodges' film, starting with simple swindling in the pubs and clubs, sinking first into backhanders and payoffs, then further into rampant corruption at the heart of city politics, and finally, of course, into the depths of human nature.

The read is a heady yet cynical, historical yet entirely topical, trawl through the grimiest bits of humanity, where friends become disposable enemies and the innocent become the guilty, where the 'One-Armed Bandit Murder' is grisly headline news. Of course, the cartoonish Mafia characters, like Tony 'Ducks' Corallo and 'Italian Albert' Dimes stick in the imagination, and the descent of Luvaglio, freshly renamed as Vince Landa (to seem less Italian, apparently), into the heart of darkness is a compelling thread. But the really scary stuff concerns the heights of power to which the tawdriness and sleaze ascends.

It's a gangster story (a la Peaky Blinders, as the cover blurb would have it), with guns, girls and slicked-back hair, but it's also uncomfortably close to home and should be echoing loud in the ears of those who are overseeing the reform of gambling legislation six decades down the line.

Bandit Country, by Jamie Reid, is published by Bonnier Books UK (£9.99)
Peter Thomas

Read more . . .

A relentless search for hope at the bottom of racing's barrel 

Nicky Henderson and the horses that shaped a career of sympathy and genius 

Noir thriller brings home brutal lessons of botched gambling laws 

'This is far from just a picture book' - a shining masterpiece on a decade of best horses 

Racing's history is not as well preserved as it might be - but one writer is on a mission to put that right 

The Racing Post Annual 2024 is out now! This exciting review of the racing year has 208 colour pages packed with the best stories and is beautifully illustrated with stunning images. The perfect gift at £19.99. To order, click here or call 01933 304858.