I wrote secretly as Dick Francis to keep his book sales alive… admits son Felix

FELIX FRANCIS, son of jockey and author Dick Francis, started secretly writing books under his father’s name while he was still alive.

Now a bestselling novelist himself, he tells Donna Ferguson his father never wrote another novel after his mother Mary – who used to ‘polish his father’s prose’ – died in 2000. Felix, 70, took up his father’s legacy and started writing ‘Dick Francis’ novels in 2005, to boost demand for his father’s backlist.

What did your parents teach you about money?

My father taught me to be careful with it while my mother taught me to use it for good. Later on in life when he was earning very good money, he was extremely generous. And while he wanted me and my elder brother Merrick to stand on our own two feet, there was always a reserve for us if necessary. That’s my own approach to children as well.

What did your mother do for a living?

My mother and father wrote the books together. He had the ideas and would write things down and my mother would polish the prose to get it into shape to be published. To me, ‘Dick Francis’ was always Richard (which was what my mother called my father) and Mary Francis. We grew up in what I consider to be one of the greatest fiction factories of the 20th Century. My mother also ran a dress shop and learned to fly.

Why was she never credited?

My father always said he would quite like to have Mum’s name on the front cover, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Dick Francis was already quite a famous name, after my father rode Devon Loch in the 1956 Grand National. My mother was pretty savvy about marketing and Dick Francis was the name to use.

Were you always a well-off family?

My parents had no money at all when they first married. They lived in a converted hayloft in a stable. Being a champion jockey was quite lucrative and my parents bought some land and built their own house in 1953. I was eight when their first novel, Dead Cert, was published in 1962. Towards the end of the 1960s, my parents were beginning to do very well. My father had 34 No.1 bestsellers in a row. They got a fourseater aeroplane… a nicer boat and started travelling more. .

When did you start writing Dick Francis novels?

It all came about by accident. In 2000, my parents decided to retire. They found the last book, Shattered, a huge struggle. I discovered it was only two-thirds written, so I rolled up my sleeves and wrote the last third in a week. My mother died from a heart attack that year, three weeks after they announced their retirement.

Five years later, my father’s literary agent told me my father’s books were going to go out of print, because there hadn’t been a new book in five years. He said what we need is a new [Dick Francis] hardback to stimulate backlist sales. I said I would like to have a go [writing it]. When Under Orders came out, in 2006… no one knew I had written it. I couldn’t tell anyone that for eight years.

Sadly, my father died in 2010. I’ve now written 17 Dick Francis books. It makes me feel closer to my parents when I write them. My latest book,

No Reserve, has ‘a Dick Francis novel’ written on it. And the Dick Francis backlist is still in print so I must be doing something right.