NOT only does Steve Cauthen provide the foreword, but author Michael Tanner includes much of his conversations with Cauthen throughout this fascinating read.

This approach lends it more of an air of an autobiography. Cauthen’s reflections, looking back on career highlights, are not only insightful, but an insight into the characters of the many equine greats he was associated with.

Fans of Cauthen will be delighted; fans of the champion racehorses of the 1980s will be in seventh heaven.

If you are expecting this biography to cover only Steve Cauthen, and only his time in Britain, the chances are you have never read the previous biographies published by Michael Tanner.

Tanner leaves no stone unturned when it comes to research, meticulous in his detail, and this latest tome raises the bar yet again.

The first 57 pages chart Cauthen’s rapid rise to stardom in his native America, providing every detail that biography lovers will relish, race by race, horse by horse.

And, of course, Affirmed. We might have expected, given the title, for the American years to be brushed over, but that has never been Tanner’s way.

Typically, with Cauthen’s introduction to Barry Hills comes a mini-biography of the trainer for the reader.

Anyone completely new to racing may happily pick this book up and know who is who, and why, with the minimum fuss. Tanner keeps directly to the point and gives us the facts and details when and where needed.

If the biography of icon Cauthen is not enough, the biographies of the people he rode for and the horses he rode are detailed and lovingly portrayed, often by Cauthen himself. But it is in the layout that this book truly shines.

Tanner has chosen to take us through Cauthen’s career not year by year, but by grouping together horses and great races. This makes it such an entertaining and easy read, concentrating on the complete careers of the likes of Oh So Sharp, Reference Point and Arazi rather than reeling out chronological facts and figures and losing the context.

The facts and figures are there, too, and Tanner doesn’t simply provide opinions as to why Cauthen was one of the greatest jockeys; he backs it all up with statistics and uses his own specialist knowledge of race times and fractionals to really pin-point what made Cauthen great.

Not only is this book recommended reading for all racing fans, no self-respecting racing fan should be without it.

Steve Cauthen – English Odyssey, by Michael Tanner, is published by Racing Post and costs £19.99.