Horse Trader: Robert Sangster and the Rise and Fall of the Sport of Kings

But now things were rather different. David Freeman and Leo McParland had another good racehorse, a very fast but moderately bred gelding called Salan. They very much wanted him to run in the Ayr Gold Cup where Robert’s own filly was bidding for glory. In addition everyone knew Robert had a massive wager on the race. He would never say precisely how much but Nick Robinson thought it was a £100 double – Intermezzo to win the St Leger at 7–1 and Brief Star for the Gold Cup at 33–1. When Intermezzo won the St Leger the entire situation became rather serious.

Robert turned up at the Turnberry Hotel, at the usual time, and took a surreptitious glance at the wine list, which was reputed to be the best in Scotland. After the traditional twilight nine holes, he changed and prepared for dinner with four of his closest friends – Nick; Bobby McAlpine, heir to the large northern-based construction company Sir Alfred McAlpine Ltd; Tim Holland, proprietor of the legendary London gaming club, Crockford’s (whose faithful caddy Mullins sat alone at a nearby table); and Tim Kitson, the young Yorkshire politician who was to become Parliamentary Private Secretary to the future Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath. Eric Cousins joined them an hour later. By now the dining room was full of racing’s major personalities, as it always was for this meeting: the champion jockey Lester Piggott, the professional gambler Alec Bird with his guest Phil Bull, the red-bearded publisher of racing’s ‘Bible’ Timeform, leading northern owner Guy Reed, trainers Geoff Wragg, Peter Easterby, Sam Hall and Harry Thompson Jones, and others.

All through dinner Robert kept going on about the presence of Salan in his race. Eric was, naturally, in a very awkward position. He owed loyalty to all of his owners, and Freeman and McParland were insisting on running their horse. Robert kept muttering darkly about the consequences of Salan beating Brief Star. And as Robert kept looking at the form, Eric was clearly looking at the sack from his old friend and principal owner. He tried to explain his position, but Robert continued to grumble. He was still grumbling the following day when the starter sent the field away. And he was beside himself when Salan hit the front coming to the final furlong. But Brief Star was still there, running fiercely in the middle of the pack. Suddenly she made her break, on the outside, and flew over the closing yards, to nail Salan right on the line, winning by a neck.

Robert, fighting back his overpowering joy, turned to Nick and said cheerfully: ‘Well, that wasn’t much trouble, was it?’ And then to Eric, he said, with a smile of absolute calm, ‘Of course, you knew I was only kidding, didn’t you?’

There was another occasion at Ayr a few years later when Eric Cousins advised Robert to have a bet on yet another chestnut filly of his, Solo Stream, in Ayr’s big race of the day, the five-furlong Bass Special sprint. However, before they went to post, Robert had spent half an hour chatting to the great Irish trainer Mick O’Toole, who could be damned if he could see anything beating his horse in the race. Robert changed his mind and backed the Irish horse instead of his own. He watched the race with Nick Robinson and, with a couple of hundred yards to run, Robert cried in exasperation: ‘Damn! We’re beat.’

Nick, who had stuck to his original bet on Robert’s Solo Stream, replied: ‘Yes, very boring for you. But you’ve just bloody well won the race!’

‘Who’s won the race?’

‘You have! Solo Stream, your horse, remember?’ replied his long-time cohort. ‘I suppose we had better get down to the winner’s enclosure to meet Eric.’ And they bolted down the grandstand back stairs, chuckling as they had done for so many years, like two dreadful schoolboys, who had nearly got caught, but not quite.

By the end of the 1960s Eric Cousins had won Robert fifty races, including a few over the jumps, including the Midlands Grand National at Uttoxeter. He had also won at Newmarket, the headquarters of English racing. This was with his grey colt Hang On in a contest named the Crawfurd Handicap, about three weeks before the Jockey Club had blackballed Christopher Soames, just down the road at The Rooms. At precisely that time, Robert had become so engrossed with the challenge of actually breeding his own racehorses that he bought himself a stud farm in Cheshire, or at least he bought himself a rather decrepit two-hundred-acre farm in Cheshire with a view to turning it into a stud farm. It was called Swettenham Hall and it was situated in the most lonely part of the countryside to the north of Congleton. Basically, the only serious landmark in the entire area was the giant inter-planetary telescope at Jodrell Bank which you could just see from some of the paddocks. Its privacy, its good, damp, green land and its calcium soil seemed potentially perfect for rearing horses.

Robert attacked the entire project with immense style. He sought expert advice on the quality of the land, and then he ploughed up the paddocks which they judged were in a flood-plain to the River Dane, and he laid down a complete drainage system. He had top architects design his barns, the paddocks were all newly fenced with post-and-rail. He studied the National Stud’s operation at Newmarket, copied what he liked best, instructed his builders to renovate the great archway into the courtyard which supported the grand clock tower. There was a beautiful lawn set into the middle of the yard with a wide gravel path around its perimeter. With his normal brutal adherence to ‘the numbers’ and carefully advised by his father, Robert brought the stud farm up to scratch ‘right on budget’.

When it was finished, the Swettenham Stud looked as if it had been there for ever. As a matter of fact, so did Robert, elegantly tailored as usual, with a Rolls Royce purring in the background as he chatted to his new stud groom Joe French. All around the property the staff addressed him with the courteous familiarity of the more feudal reaches of the English countryside, ‘’Morning, Mr Robert …’, ‘By the way, Mr Robert, would that filly have a bit of a chance at Haydock on Friday?’

He renovated the turreted seventeenth-century manor house, repainting its stucco exterior gleaming white. Flower beds were planted, new trees set around the grounds, while Christine began re-decorating the interior. Robert began to fill the new paddocks with the broodmares he had collected in his few years of ownership. There was Audrey Joan, a sprinting filly he had bought after she had won the Portland Handicap with a smashing victory over Close Call and Forlorn River and who would later produce him four stakes winners. There was his lovely grey filly Flying By, a top-class sprinter who had cost him more than 9000 guineas at the December sales. Soon there would be his extremely tough brown filly Tora Santa, who was by the 1964 Derby winner Santa Claus, and who had won for Robert a big twenty-two-runner maiden at Ascot. Pride of place in the main paddock would go to his beloved Brief Star, heroine of the Ayr Gold Cup.

By the time Robert and Christine moved in, their first son Guy was seven years old and, with his two younger brothers, Ben and Adam, a new and enlarged Sangster dynasty was already in the making. Surrounded by his family, his broodmares and his paddocks and staff, Robert felt for the first time in his life that he had truly come home. Here at last was the environment he loved, far from the daily hassle and hustle that all young businessmen cope with as they take on more and more responsibility from their fathers.

Robert, at thirty-one, was now the kingpin at the Vernon Organization, relied upon by Sangster Senior to ensure the day-to-day running of their empire. But even he was unable to put into profit the division which handled credit betting on horseracing. Robert tried. He even tried to steer some of the more chancy bets of his own through the firm, on the basis that if he was to lose, he may as well lose it to the company. But, being Robert, there was something of quid pro quo to his thoughtfulness. Nick Robinson says it was simple really. Robert only bet with Vernons if it was a real long-shot which probably would not win. He would call Nick in the morning and say, for instance, ‘Put £25 on for me this afternoon, would you? On your Vernons account, Bright Hopes at Newmarket this afternoon, see if he will give you 16–1

Nick would telephone Vernons sometime before the race and ask for the odds, only to be told, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Robinson, we cannot give you better than 100–8 on that horse.’

‘Oh, you could do a bit better than that, I’m an old customer. Ask the manager for me, would you?’

Nick would then hear a rustling and someone call: ‘Er, Mr Robert. I’ve got Mr Robinson on the line. He wants 16–1 about Bright Hopes. She’s only 100–8 on our board.’ And then, in the distance: ‘Oh, that’ll be all right, Joe, give him the 16s.’

Of course they nearly always lost, so it never did anyone any harm, but Robert’s instincts were sound: if I lose, the family firm gets the money; if I win, I do better with Vernons than I would anywhere else. Very, very neat. Very, very Sangster. His father might almost have approved. But only just.

By the start of the 1970s Robert’s organization was well-established in sponsoring a major race at the local Haydock Park, the Vernons Sprint Cup. It was run at the October Meeting with a big prize and some very good horses had won it. But in 1971 there was a particular sense of drama. The outstanding sprinter Green God, who had finished first five times in a row that season, was a very questionable favourite because in his last race Green God had managed to get left at the start in France, and lost to Fireside Chat. Most good judges, including Robert, believed that Green God was the fastest horse in England, but in the Vernons he would face two other pretenders to the sprint championship, Sweet Revenge, who had won two big races in France demolishing Fireside Chat both times, and Apollo Nine, who had shouldered a massive weight of nine stone five pounds to win the Stewards Cup at Goodwood in August. The whole of England was talking about the ensuing six-furlong battle at Haydock Park which would surely decide the fastest horse in the country. Robert, by now a director of the racecourse, was as ever heavily into the ‘crack’ in the members’ bar, talking to trainers, owners, breeders and, on this day, managers of stud farms, the stallion masters who would be watching for the horse who might make a top sire. And the horse they were all watching was Green God.

On the day before the big sprint, there was a large gathering in the members’ bar discussing the day’s events, but more particularly discussing the forthcoming clash between Green God, Sweet Revenge and Apollo Nine. Robert was with a group of Irish bloodstock agents, everyone talking to everyone, whether they knew each other or not, as is the general form on such occasions. Robert was talking to his old friend Jack Doyle who pointed out that the tall, dark-haired young Irishman ‘across the way’ had settled terms with Green God’s owner David Robinson. The horse would be sold this evening for £160,000 and the deal would stand no matter what happened in the race. Green God would run in the colours of Mr Robinson for the last time tomorrow, leased back to his owner just for the day, and then he would leave England to take up stud duties at Castle Hyde in Tipperary.

How, precisely, did they arrive at that figure? That was what Robert wanted to know. What if Green God gets beaten?

‘Well,’ said Jack, ‘that’s where they start. The buyers’ syndicate assumes he will get beat. If that should be the case, I would think they would hope to stand him at perhaps £1000 to cover a mare, which they plan to do about forty times a year. That’s £120,000 in three years. That means each share will cost £3000, because there are always forty shareholders. So he’s got to cover another forty mares during his first three years to get all the shareholders out clean on their investment. Well, he may not quite do that, but I don’t think an extra thirty would be asking a lot. And then they are out very little in terms of cash.’

‘But’, said Robert, ‘what if he wins?’

‘Now you’re talking,’ said Jack. ‘That’s what that syndicate is fervently hoping. Then, as Champion Sprinter, Green God will probably stand at £1500, and forty mares will earn £60,000 in a season. In three seasons he will have earned £180,000. And, if he covers a few extras for the farm and perhaps six or eight for the syndicate members, there’ll be another £15,000 in the pot each year. In three years that’s £65,000 profit, less the cost of his keep. If he is successful, which we won’t really know until his fifth year, there will be a serious amount of cash around for these brave fellows who have just risked £160,000.’

‘Christ!’ said Robert thoughtfully. He looked across at the young Irishman. He seemed such a countryman and here he was representing a group of Irish breeders risking phone numbers on the purchase of a racehorse. As far as Robert could see they had a long-term bet of nearly £100,000 riding on this race tomorrow. Now that was serious. Suddenly all that he had done in racing, all the fun and laughter and betting he had done in partnership with Eric Cousins seemed of little consequence. These Irishmen were playing a major game and Robert felt a weird compulsion to be part of it. He had just received a crash course in how modern thinkers were basing their judgments on the syndications of stallions. Forty shareholders, putting up three times the cost of one covering for a share. You ‘get out’ in three years, after that you are on the gravy train. It was new, but it already made rock-solid financial sense to Robert, and he could not stop thinking about it, through all of the hours that led up to the running of the fifth Vernons Sprint Cup.

The following afternoon when the runners came belting out of the stalls Robert could not take his eyes off Green God. He watched Lester Piggott try to straighten him out after a bad break, saw the horse keep hanging to his left in the middle of the pack, as Apollo Nine and Sweet Revenge fought it out in the lead. Then he saw Lester ask him to quicken, stared enthralled as Green God came to deliver his challenge at the furlong, felt his heart leap as Sweet Revenge swerved violently. And he stood rapt in admiration as Piggott kept his mount straight and drove Green God past the post almost a length to the good. Sweet Revenge was second, Apollo Nine two and a half lengths further back in third place.

Robert reckoned he had seen two great professionals in action in the past twenty-four hours: Lester Piggott, who had ridden this fiery son of the equally fiery Red God to victory; and the young Irishman, who had staked so much money on a six-furlong sprint for the championship of England. Late that afternoon, back in the members’ bar, everyone was talking about Green God, his pedigree and his prospects as a stallion. Robert walked over to talk to Jack Doyle who was deep in conversation with the young Irish purchaser. ‘Hello, Robert,’ said Jack. ‘Will you have a drink with us? I don’t believe you two have met have you.’

‘Well, I know of course who you are, sir,’ said the Irishman. And he leaned forward to shake the hand of Robert Sangster. It was a handshake which would begin a lifelong friendship, a friendship which would change the world of bloodstock breeding for ever, would send prices for young racehorses to heights never before contemplated. ‘I’m John Magnier,’ he said.

3 (#ulink_e1a6788f-fce2-5153-b571-d0e7b7a8453c)

Facing the Almighty Dollar (#ulink_e1a6788f-fce2-5153-b571-d0e7b7a8453c)

John Magnier was twenty-three years old on the day he first shook hands with Robert Sangster. Thus he was eight years junior to the heir to Vernons Pools. In terms of birth, that is. In terms of horses, John was about one hundred and forty-eight years older, since the Magnier family of Fermoy, County Cork, traces its roots in the serious business of breeding racehorses to at least 1800 and probably back into the previous century.

John’s father Michael Magnier stood the great steeple-chasing stallion Cottage at the family’s Grange Stud on the outskirts of the town. Cottage it was who sired three Grand National winners including Sheila’s Cottage and Lovely Cottage in 1946 and 1948. He also sired the immortal Cottage Rake, trained by Vincent O’Brien to win those three Cheltenham Gold Cups in succession 1948–50, while R. Sangster was grappling with elementary French a few miles to the north at the Leas Preparatory School. John’s grandfather Thomas Magnier owned the fine Irish stallion Edlington who won fourteen races in the 1880s and was then occupied in the traditional way as a ‘travelling stallion’, being ridden along the lovely valley of the River Blackwater beyond Fermoy and covering the racing mares of the local Irish farmers. Like John Magnier himself, old Edlington had a firm sense of place in this world and spent many weeks on an annual sojourn at the Duke of Devonshire’s great estates surrounding the castle of Lismore.

Home to Edlington was nonetheless Fermoy. As was the Grange Stud to Cottage. Green God would live about four miles away at Castle Hyde Stud, which had been purchased by John Magnier a few months previously. Green God was a lucky horse because in this deep, quiet Irish country grooms and stud owners alike understand the high-mettled racer perhaps as no other breed of men on earth. To the uninitiated, a thoroughbred stallion can look very fearsome, standing glaring in a paddock, his breath coming in short snorts, perhaps pawing the ground, irritated at being disturbed. Some farms in Kentucky and Australia carry the stark warning: STALLIONS BITE. beware. It is thus a source of absolute wonder to watch a gentle Irish groom unlatch the gate, close it quietly behind him and stroll out to the beast, muttering softly: ‘Will you come over here now? And stop your showing off. I’m not planning to chase you … Come here now.’ It is even more amazing to watch apparent anger fall from the stallion. To see him dip his head, almost as an apology and then walk sheepishly up to his man, his head held low like an old dog. John Magnier can charm a stallion like that. If Robert Sangster lived to be a thousand years old he could never learn it. Nor could most people. You have to be born in Ireland to achieve that degree of harmony with a fighting-fit stallion of the blood.

Even the language of the two men, that late afternoon at Haydock Park, was different. Robert is always inclined to talk in terms of great victories, courage, jockeys, bets and values. John Magnier is much more of the horse. His judgments are punctuated by the phrases of the horseman: ‘If you look at him in a certain light he can really fill your eye’, ‘For a sprinter he stands over a lot of ground’, ‘For a son of Red God he has quite a kind look to him, but at a certain angle you can see a touch of the devil in his eye’. Those are the timeless words of the stallion master, bred into the man as profoundly and surely as the speed, gallantry and temperament is bred into the horse. In John Magnier’s case, it was bred into him for just as many years. When he stands and looks at a racehorse going into action, he is not looking entirely at him. He is looking, in his own mind, at the foals of a future generation: ‘Will I always be looking for mares with better knees than he has?’, ‘Will he want medium to small mares given his own imposing height?’, ‘He was sweating when he went to post – is there more of Red God’s temper about him than I can see? Will I spend half the year looking for mares of a quiet, calm temperament for him?’

Always a thousand questions. Usually considerably fewer answers. He and Robert Sangster had many things to say to each other but largely in a different language. And yet there was a quick and early bond between them. That bond was money. Robert, having inherited his first one-third of the Vernons empire, had a considerable amount of it. John had long had far-reaching plans to make a considerable amount of it but, in broad terms, it occurred to him that he could go further, faster, with some serious Sangster money behind him. In turn, Robert did not care how far John went in the stallion business, nor how rich he became in the riveting business of syndicating expensive stallions, just as long as he took him, Robert, along with him. Great partnerships have thrived on less worthy premises. This one was destined to go every step of the way.

The two men talked for a long time at Haydock and, aside from the Irishman’s enormous knowledge of breeding, he demonstrated to Robert an equally grand knowledge of the actual racing. John Magnier’s family stronghold of Fermoy was a mere twenty-eight miles across the Cork–Tipperary border from the south of Ballydoyle, the sprawling training complex which was home to two of the last four Derby winners, Sir Ivor and Nijinsky. It was also the home of Robert’s boyhood hero, Vincent O’Brien, who had prepared them both for glory. The Magniers and the O’Briens, both originally Cork families, had known each other for generations. Indeed John’s mother was matron of honour at Vincent O’Brien’s wedding. John’s keenly observed views on the various merits of the two Irish-based Derby winners were completely absorbing to Robert. John’s words were glossed by the fact that here was a man who was not simply fiddling about trying to win a sprint handicap at Haydock. Here was a man to whom racing at the very highest classic level was the principal arena in which he intended to participate.

There are many owners and breeders who have a fairly shrewd idea of what is going on in a training stable, but John Magnier possessed insights which no one had ever expounded to Robert before. He had, perhaps, only a vicarious proximity to racing’s Hall of Fame, but he had talked with the natural authority of a young man who knew the O’Brien family and nothing seemed to intimidate him. He would, he said, given half a chance, have dived at the opportunity to stand the great Nijinsky at stud in Ireland. As he mentioned on that afternoon, ‘Jesus, Robert, he was sold to an American syndicate for $5.5 million, which is only about 2.2 million Irish punts. With 40 shareholders, that’s only £55,000 a share. That seems like a lot of money, but it’s not. I’m laying you dollars to doughnuts right now that Nijinsky’s first-sale yearlings, on the market in Kentucky in 1973, will fetch $100,000 each. I would not be that surprised if they fetched up to $200,000 each. How the devil can £55,000 be expensive when your first yearling will – at least in my view – damned nearly get you out of your investment? After that you can breed to him every year for the rest of his life. Free.’

Robert Sangster has never forgotten that conversation. Magnier’s cool belief that he should actually have bought the great Nijinsky from the platinum billionaire Charles Engelhard and run his stud career in County Cork was tantamount, in Robert’s view, to calling the Queen and asking her how she felt about raffling the Crown Jewels. Top stallions, Robert believed, went to Kentucky, where the big dollars lived. That was the modern pattern. There was not enough money in Ireland to buy a leg in most of them, never mind the entire horse. In addition, things looked like growing worse because, in John Magnier’s view, there were signs of a serious upswing in world bloodstock prices which were being driven by a run of star racehorses: aside from the recent US-bred English Derby winners Sir Ivor, Nijinsky and Mill Reef, there was the crack English 2000 Guineas winner Brigadier Gerard, who had never been beaten. In the United States yearlings by sires such as Buckpasser, Raise a Native, Dr Fager and Northern Dancer had all gone close to $200,000. What bothered John Magnier was that Ireland, and England, might be left behind in the world bloodstock league. This would be something of a mortal blow to him, since he envisioned himself at the top of that league, not in some halfway house.

Magnier’s view of the future, his slightly roguish charm, his deep, conspiratorial Irish voice, the muttered tones whenever he mentioned specific amounts of money – all of this appealed enormously to Robert. Because this was a man who was not just nattering about the industry, this was a man who had just laid a king’s ransom on the line for a horse called Green God. Robert had watched it, comprehended the risk and admired from afar as Magnier and his friends had somehow bounced out on top, with the best of the deal. When they parted in the early part of the evening, he and John shook hands again, resolving to stay in touch and to talk more. Neither one of them, however, had the remotest idea of the ferocity of the financial rollercoaster ride upon which they would ultimately embark.

Through the following spring the whole of Ireland was discussing the chances of Vincent O’Brien winning a third Derby in five years with his American-bred bay-colt Roberto, owned by the Ohio construction millionaire John Galbreath. John Magnier told Robert all about it, how fast, though slightly unpredictable, Roberto was. But, generally, they all thought he would get home at Epsom. On Derby day they were proved right, Roberto made it by a short head, ridden by Lester Piggott.

That same day Robert said on the telephone, only half jocularly, that he supposed John would be out there trying to buy Roberto for God knows how many millions, but the Irishman replied very seriously:

‘I’ll give you several reasons why not. Firstly, Mr Galbreath has just a little bit more money than Croesus and he never sells anything, far less his first English Derby winner. Secondly, he has already announced the fact that the horse will stand at his own Darby Dan Farm in Lexington, Kentucky. And thirdly, there’s just a little bit too much fire in Roberto’s make-up for me. I think he might produce a lot of very hot horses which might be difficult to train.’

In the same phone conversation, however, Robert agreed to make the trip to the Keeneland Sales in Kentucky in July, where he would team up with John Magnier’s Irish friends and have a proper look at the world market. There was now little doubt that Robert was determined to enter the breeding industry in a major way. Before he went to Keeneland he talked the entire subject through with his father, who affirmed what Robert had always known: that he would support financially his hard-working son and heir in all of his serious business ventures. Robert was already making a success of his Swettenham Stud breeding operation and Vernon was wisely of the opinion that he would not interfere until the former heavyweight champion of the Berlin Brigade made a mistake of unreasonable magnitude.

Robert arrived at the Keeneland Sales as a near-total stranger. There were one or two English trainers and bloodstock agents who knew him, but as far as the big buyers and sellers were concerned, the name ‘Sangster’ was not poised on the lips of the mighty. John Magnier casually introduced him to Vincent O’Brien which was much more of a thrill than Robert ever admits, and he also fell into conversation with the big English owner-breeder Charles St George. The upshot of that morning’s discussions was that Robert ended up taking a share in a yearling Vincent was buying for St George and which would subsequently be named Cellini. The colt was by the great American stallion Round Table, from one of the finest families in the American Stud Book, his dam being the brilliant racemare Gamely, a US National Champion and winner of sixteen races. The second dam – the yearling’s grandma – was Gambetta, granddam also of another great American racer Drumtop. Gambetta was also a half-sister to the stallion Ridan, and to the Champion Two-Year-Old filly Moccasin, and to the dam of Vincent’s current best two-year-old Thatch. There are no better families than that in the entire world.

The yearling was a strongly-made individual and Vincent was very taken with him. Robert conferred with John Magnier who became, he recalls, just a tad poetic. ‘I think it was Damon Runyan who said, Robert, that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. But that’s the way to bet! And Vincent wants to bet. Get in.’

Robert got in. Vincent was forced to $240,000 against determined bidding from the English trainer Bernard Van Cutsem and the French trainer Alec Head.

‘Christ!’ said Robert as the bidding spiralled.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said John Magnier. ‘He’s a very tough-looking individual and the pedigree is outstanding. The horse is a sound investment, I’m sure of that. He’d be cheap if he could win a decent race. Vincent knows that’s a real stallion’s pedigree.’

Robert was enthralled by all of this. He understood the economics with total clarity. He knew his father would approve, because this horse was already the property of a syndicate: he, Robert, was in for a share; St George was in; and Captain Tim Rogers, another Irish stallion master, was also in. The risk was already spread. What do you want, a third of a potential classic racehorse and future stallion perhaps to be valued in millions or three prospective handicappers at Ayr? Robert was very certain of the answer. Ayr had been fun, but he had, irrevocably, moved on. As he and John Magnier talked long into the night after that first day at the Keeneland Sales, they both knew with immense sureness that the answer to all of the thoroughbred breeding conundrums rested with the business of syndication. Big partners, with big money, going for the best horses together. And, in the opinion of John Magnier, Robert was the man to head it up, to become the international salesman.

But to this, Robert had a rather uncharacteristic reaction. He felt, still, that he was just too much of a new boy. All the discussions he had had over so many countless hours with John Magnier had underlined, in his own mind, how much he had to learn. With Magnier he often felt as he had once felt with Nick Robinson – ‘Bloody ignorant, since you mention it!’ – and he was uncertain of his credentials.