I OWE KNOWLEDGE of such Welsh words as I’ve used to Mr. Alan Jones of Datchworth, who was so kind as to instruct me in what he calls “the language of Paradise.” Thank you, Alan.
As ever, I’m grateful to the wonderfully efficient team at Putnam and especially my editor, Rachel Kahan. I just wish sometimes that she and my equally marvelous agent, Helen Heller, didn’t persist with their advice being right in every single instance.
The London Library, that great reservoir of knowledge, stops me from making more historical mistakes than I do.
And I don’t know what I’d accomplish without the help that my daughter, Emma, gives me in coping with secretarial and financial matters, or without Barry, my husband, abandoning his own work to accompany me on research trips.