Lanterna Rally

Author: Andrew Lemon

Publisher: Hardie Grant Publishing

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9781740664905

The History of Australian Thoroughbred Racing Volume Three is as much a history of Australia as a history of Australian thoroughbred horse racing. This book covers the social and political history of racing throughout Australia in the period 1939 to 2007, from war to equine influenza, totes and SP bookies to TAB corporations, champion horses, jockeys and trainers, scandals and glories, outback scrubbers to Bernborough, Tulloch and Makybe Diva...and literally a cast of thousands. Uniquely giving emphasis to the story in the smaller states as well as the larger and richer ones, the book also examines the turbulent recent history of the sport, or industry, in an attempt to demystify the jargon of privatization, rationalization and internationalization. Standing alone as a history of modern racing, it is also a sequel to Andrew Lemon's previous two volumes on the beginnings and the golden age of Australian racing, and is the long-awaited conclusion to the trilogy.Like volumes one and two - that have been updated and reissued with Volume Three, it is structured around Harold Freedman's History of Racing mural at Flemington - a sequence of seven enormous paintings based on the original research which is the foundation of this book. Scenes from the mural's final two panels are beautifully reproduced throughout this volume, supplemented by dozens of photographs and the works of other artists. The mural, twenty years after its completion, perhaps only now is beginning to be recognized as a master work. In its own intricate detail it conveys something of the richness and complexity of the sport and the beauty of Australian horse racing in its fi rst two hundred years. Book and mural were conceived together and now the saga reaches its conclusion.