 Later in the century the race was the setting of a thriller by the popular novelist Henry Hawley Smart.For three years during the First World War, while Aintree Racecourse was taken over by the War Office, an alternative race was run at Gatwick Racecourse, a now disused course on land now occupied by Gatwick Airport.The first of these races, in 1916, was called the Racecourse Association Steeplechase, and in 1917 and 1918 the race was called the War National Steeplechase.