DICK FRANCIS:

Dick has had three main careers: Air Force pilot and airframe fitter (during the war years), jockey and novelist. In 1957, he retired from racing at the age of 37 and became a racing correspondent for the London Sunday Express. Five years after that in 1962, his first novel Dead Cert was published. A clever man, Francis made a deal with his publishing company that as long as he wrote a book a year, they would keep all of his novels in print. In 1983, he was knighted with the Order of the British Empire.