THERE is a Zen-like feeling to being in the company of Sir Francis Brooke, the Irishman with one of the key positions in British racing. Strolling around the grounds of his family farm, Glenbevan, in Croom, Co Limerick with his wife Katherine, it is not hard to imagine that he is very much at home in this oasis of calm.

Though born in Dublin, his father George and mother Melissa, who is from nearby Adare, moved the family to Glenbevan in 1964, the year after his birth. The maternal family home is near Kilgobbin, the original seat of his mother’s family.