Richard Austen of the Racing Post speaks in a self- deprecatory way about the three years and 10 months it took him to write At The Festival. Anyone arriving at the end of this richly evocative account of Cheltenham’s most famous races - a labour of love, beyond question - will marvel that he managed it so quickly.

Here are the heart-stopping finishes up the famous hill, the joy, the sadness, the lingering regret over chances missed, the stories behind the stories. Here we have Jonjo O’Neill, years after the event, admitting he was still ashamed of himself for hitting Sea Pigeon when a Champion Hurdle was slipping away.

Or John Francome acknowledging that Bula and Lanzarote, supremely talented hurdlers though they undoubtedly were, never quite mastered the contrasting discipline of steeplechasing and were never going to win a Gold Cup. And here, towards the end of 460 riveting pages, is Ken Bridgwater quietly shuffling off this mortal coil in the way he would probably have chosen, having just fed his beloved mare Winnie The Witch.

Austen, a Timeform stalwart for many years, has taken the forensic analysis associated with that illustrious organisation and overlaid it with deeply human stories. As the down-to-earth David Bridgwater, a man so straight the words ‘off’ and ‘not off’ might just as well be written in Swahili, points out: “When you’ve struggled as a trainer all your life, or whatever Dad did, and struggled to clothe us as kids, to then win that (the County Hurdle) - it means so much more than Nicky Henderson winning the Gold Cup with Long Run, or any other Gold Cup winner trained by a big yard. It’s just so much more.”

Austen, whose grandfather bred the brilliant if enigmatic Birds Nest, attended his first Cheltenham Festival in 1981 at the age of 15 and has been in love with the free-wheeling extravaganza ever since. His throat is probably still sore from roaring David and Winnie The Witch home (33/1 but far from a no-hoper on form) a decade later and although all of the big names are in At The Festival - you would buy it for the riveting section on Dawn Run alone - the romantic in him turns again to the smaller stables and the least likely denouements.

Again, a Timeform-like attention to detail surfaces as he mentions how rare it is to encounter heavy ground at the festival these days, whereas it was once accepted with a shrug of the shoulders. Ikdam would not have won the 1989 Triumph Hurdle at 66/1 on any other surface but it rained and rained and those at Richard Holder’s Portbury, Bristol yard feared an abandonment.

What a chapter this is! Full of Bristol characters and Holder’s penchant for all-night card games before supervising first lot. This extraordinary story, with Paul Holder, a chip off the old block if ever there was one, adding bits and pieces along the way, would stand on its own but Austen finds room to tell us what happened to them all - Richard no longer with us, former son-in-law Pat Murphy away in another parish these days, jockey Nigel Coleman sadly never the same after a brutal fall.

If you love Cheltenham you will love At The Festival. Racing is blessed with some very fine writers but I doubt there will be a better book this year.

At The Races by Richard Austen, Sportsbooks Limited, £20