You meet an eclectic bunch of people in the horse-racing business. Yet it was at prep school 55 years ago that I first met Simon Marsh, who is the guiding light at Andrew and Madeleine Lloyd Webber’s Watership Down stud near Newbury.

‘Bog’, as we knew him, didn’t reappear after the summer holidays and word got to us that a garage door had fallen on his head. We were told to clear his locker. RIP Bog Marsh, we thought.

Many years later, someone called ‘Pie’ Marsh arrived in Lambourn. He looked and sounded like Bog and had a slight dent in his head, but apart from that he was very chipper.

It turned out that Bog had skulked off to Harrow where he’d scooped up two F-grades in his A-levels. There must have been difficulties with the third subject. And then he’d been packed off on a container ship to South America, before they’d had enough of him and moved him on to Australia.

‘Anyone will give you a job shovelling shit, but it gets more difficult if you want to progress’

‘Anyone will give you a job shovelling shit, but it gets more difficult if you want to progress’

It was to discuss the rise and rise of Watership Down stud and Bog’s genius that we gathered at the Berkshire golf club; although I suspect Lady Lloyd-Webber might say ‘our genius’.

 A couple of his fellow young thrusters of the Jockey Club joined us to talk mares and stallions as we hacked our way around the blue course. ‘Oh shit,’ Pie roared on the first tee box, as he carved his drive in the direction of Ascot racecourse. An elderly........

© The Spectator