Book review: Aintree: the history of the racecourse

John Pinfold, a scholar who worked at the L.S.E. and Rhodes House in Oxford until his retirement, has long been recognised as the leading expert on the famous Grand National Steeplechase at Aintree, a course once in the country near Liverpool, and now surrounded by Liverpool’s urban sprawl. Each of his books and articles has provided new insights, but Aintree is the best yet, an outstandingly erudite and scholarly, well-referenced but also very readable, work, using statistics when appropriate, which draws on such a wide range of sources, from private family archives to government records, that it is likely to remain definitive for many years… Pinfold’s book is an accessible, informative and fascinating account of a course that has come to symbolize steeplechase racing in England. It is much more than a work of reference and should appeal to both the academic historians of sport and to those interested in the history of an iconic location.