Word: ascot
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...mourning, a $2,500 plater named Sunny Al was scratched in the eighth race at Tropical Park that afternoon. The former bootblack was Anthony Aste, 88, founder of the Griffin Manufacturing Co. (the world's largest makers of shoe polish) and owner of the old Ascot Stable. In six decades on the American turf, Sportsman Aste, "the King of the Bootblacks," had made his mark with a colorful personality and many a better horse than Sunny...
...ticket to the royal enclosure at Ascot costs only ?10 (?7 for women), but for two centuries British horse-lovers have had more trouble getting in than a fishmonger's daughter trying to marry the Prince of Wales. A man needed more than the cash and the proper clothes; his social background had to shine pure and proud under the fierce scrutiny of the Duke of Norfolk and his committee of twelve inquisitors. Ever since Ascot was founded by Queen Anne in 1711, court rules have governed admission to the royal enclosure. And since Britain's Sovereign heads...
...could go coroneted to acclaim your Queen in Westminster Abbey with the stain of divorce on you," wrote an angry Sunday Express columnist last year, "but you cannot, if so stained, have the duke's permission to cheer her horse at Ascot." Barred bluebloods saw red when divorced American Actor Douglas Fairbanks got into the enclosure. But there was nothing they could do. (Fairbanks got his passes through the U.S. embassy; had he been a British subject he would have stayed outside with his peers, Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, Bertrand Russell and Randolph Churchill...
Last week Bernard Marmaduke Fitz-Alan-Howard, 16th Duke of Norfolk, announced that Ascot would relax its rigid rules. From now on, participation in a divorce action will not be grounds for automatic exclusion from the royal enclosure. The same old rigid rules would still govern admission to the patch of ground immediately before the Queen's box, known as the "Queen's Lawn." And now that the big barrier is down, said the duke, the size of the royal enclosure will be doubled...
After half an hour of prayers and anthems, it was all over. Queen Elizabeth hurried away to prepare for Ascot Week festivities, and Sir Winston Churchill, K.G., returned to London and the humdrum 20th century business of being Prime Minister...