Royal Ascot is not the same without Henry Cecil

For a moment it seemed incongruous reading obituaries in the same week of Sir Henry Cecil and of Esther Williams, the Hollywood star whom most of us only ever remember seeing in a swimsuit amid whirling patterns of leggy lovelies in water ballets. Then I recalled her comment that the only thing Hollywood’s moguls ever changed in her series of films were her leading men and the water in the pool and I realised there was something of a parallel.