Racing Post on course with Freud book
27.04.09 Benedicte Page reporting in The Bookseller

Racing Post Books is rushing out a title Sir Clement Freud was working on when he died earlier this month. Freud On Course is a collection of the columns written by the journalist and broadcaster for the Racing Post and Sporting Life. Edited by Sean Magee, it will be published on the 5th June in hardback (£18.99).

Sir Clement, more widely known as a "Just a Minute" contributor and foodie, had a lifelong love of racing and betting which he first developed as a schoolboy. He later went on to own several racehorses, one of whom was named Weareagrandmother after Margaret Thatcher’s announcement of the birth of her first grandchild. He was also an amateur rider in the 1970s.

James de Wesselow, m.d. of Racing Post Books, said Freud had been writing columns for the Racing Post, and before that Sporting Life, for over 10 years, and had actually been writing one of his regular pieces for the paper when he died at his desk, "mid-flow, half-way through a sentence".Freud had worked together with Magee to devise the structure for Freud on Course and most of the pieces selected to go in had been chosen before his death, said de Wesselow. He added: "The articles were fairly eclectic in subject matter. He wrote about racing, but he’d often branch out into other areas, and anything that had amused him that week. He was a very good raconteur and always ended each piece with a joke."

Sir Clement died on 15th April. He was 84. Along with his contributions as a broadcaster and well known love of food, he was also a Liberal MP for 14 years after winning the Isle of Ely seat in 1974. Freud was born in Vienna in April 1924 and was a grandchild of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Sir Clement’s elder brother is the artist Lucian Freud.