Ascot owes big debt to visionary Erskine Crum who charted a brave new course

Next week's royal meeting hoves into sight to a soundtrack of the Ascot Gavotte from My Fair Lady, although Edward Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance would be equally apt.

Public perception is that Royal Ascot is some solid rock of immutability surrounded by the seas of change but it has moved with the times or certainly lags less far behind them than of old.

It may sound bizarre but it was only in 1955 the ban on divorcees in the royal enclosure was lifted. Going back to the 1860s the course created the Iron Stand for the more grand divorced patrons at Ascot, but it was not in the holy of holies.