Circus Maximus by Annelise Gray

The Need for Speed

Annelise Grey’s Circus Maximus: Race to the Death transports us back to greatest sporting stage of the ancient Roman world with the thrill and mayhem of the real-life chariot races. The reader is right there amidst the action, hearing the thunder of hooves, the roar of the crowd, and the pulse-pounding race to the death. Here Annelise, who is somewhat slower paced than her central character Dido, writes about choreographing the book’s many action sequences and recreating the feverish atmosphere and mayhem of the Circus Maximus itself.

Unlike Tom Cruise’s character in Top
Gun, I can honestly say that I have never, ever felt the need for speed.
Driving around the rural B roads in my home county of Dorset, my palms start to
sweat if I find myself closing up on a tractor, knowing that I will be under
pressure to overtake from the impatient line of cars behind. On a dry sledging
track at a ski resort in Colorado, I once caused a mountainside tailback of
irate fellow sliders who had the misfortune to take to the course after me. And
as a child taking horse-riding lessons, I always preferred an unflappable if
sedentary equine companion to one who couldn’t be relied on to stop when
requested. In short, I have always gravitated towards the slow lane and felt
myself at home there.

So it has entertained some of the
people who know me best that my debut children’s novel, Circus Maximus: Race
to the Death, features as its main character such a risk-taker and
adrenaline seeker. Someone who thrives on the scalding heat of competition. Someone
who – unlike me – is nourished by a diet of adventure and unpredictability. The
book tells the story of twelve-year old Dido, a scrappy, horse-mad girl growing
up in the all-male, cutthroat Roman world of chariot-racing and dreaming an
impossible dream of sporting glory. She longs to be the first female to compete
at the Circus Maximus, the most famous stadium in the empire. But her world is
turned upside down one night when she’s forced to flee Rome and embark on a race
for her own survival.

In choreographing the book’s many
action sequences and recreating the cauldron-like feel and feverish atmosphere of
the Circus Maximus itself, I drew inspiration in part from Roman eyewitness accounts.
One writes of the vapour coming through the starting gates as the horses press
up against them, the choking dust thrown into the spectators’ eyes by the
galloping pack and the awful crack of bones breaking as a ‘shipwrecked’
charioteer is caught up in the wheels of a pursuing opponent. But I also pictured
the scene as if I were directing one of the Hollywood action movies in which I
fantasize about being an unlikely star. Many’s the occasion, meandering along
country roads at 40mph, that I’ve imagined I’m a cold-eyed hitwoman for hire
and it’s James Bond driving the Seat Panda up ahead. In my dreams, I’ve piloted
the Millennium Falcon through asteroid fields. And I’ve won Olympic gold at
downhill skiing more times than I can count.

As a child, the most beloved novel on
my shelf at home was Enid Bagnold’s National Velvet. It’s the story of a
shy, awkward girl called Velvet Brown who wins an untameable horse in a village
raffle and disguises herself as a boy to fulfil her dream of riding to victory
at the Grand National. In the three decades since, I’ve prayed every year for
fiction to become reality and for a female jockey to actually win the most
famous – and dangerous  – horse race in
the world. On April 10^th of this year, I finally watched it happen,
as Rachael Blackmore rode Minella Times to victory. Like millions of Velvet
fans across the world, I roared her home as she made history.

And from the safety of my own sofa, soaring
over every one of the massive fences with Blackmore as she picked her way
through the chaos of the field, I thrilled – however wistfully and fleetingly  – in the vicarious pleasure of a life lived with
the safety catch off.