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You can no longer fly Concorde across the Atlantic, but fear not. You can still buy a Dick Francis, and he does precisely the same thing: he cuts your flight time in half. Open a new one at take-off at Heathrow and by the time the villain is regretting his folly and the modest, unassuming, put-upon, tough-but-kinda-sensitive hero - who must have been modelled on me, or perhaps you - is kissing the girl, you're almost at JFK.

You can say all kinds of bad things about Dick, and most of them are true: characterisation one micron thick, heroes overdosing on self-pity, unreal situations, preposterous plots, unconvincing villains. And absolutely none of these things matters. That's not what the books are about. They're about pace.

You simply have to turn the next page. It really is as simple as that. I once met him: he told me that the thing he hates most is when people tell him they loved his last books so much that they read it straight through in three hours. “Bloody hell - it took me a year to write that.” But that's because Francis is the master of Time. No one has dealt with Time so brilliantly since Proust. Proust observed Time: Francis conquers it. You get overwhelmed by a strange, helpless feeling in the middle of the best ones: you know it's a load of nonsense, you know you have a million urgent things to do, and yet - and yet you have to see what happens next, damn and blast.

It seems that all who write about Dick Francis must find a horsey phrase to sum him up: he was a champion jockey and horses and racing crop up all the time in his books. Well, just about every Dick Francis book I have ever read is simply unable to work at walk, trot or canter. Gallop is the only pace.

One to read: Bonecrack (1971) Buy the book

Jane Wheatley interviews Dick Francis, The Times

Simon Barnes, the chief sportswriter of The Times, has competed in eventing, showjumping, dressage and endurance. He has written many books, including On Horseback, Horsesweat and Tears and the bestselling How to be a Bad Birdwatcher. His latest, How to Be Wild, was published last year. He lives in Suffolk with his family and five horses.

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