This book has taken a long time to research and write and I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to a number of people who have helped over the years.
In Israel, I would like to thank everyone who gave up the time to be interviewed over the past 20 years. Many of these interviews were conducted off the record and helped me enormously with background information on Israeli politics and the Arab–Israeli conflict.
I am very grateful to the Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip who took the time to meet with me and to be interviewed over the last two decades. Their openness and candid discussions were extremely helpful for me to get the Palestinian perspectives on Netanyahu.
As always, the members of staff at the National Archives and Records Administration in the United States were hugely beneficial in helping me navigate around background documents that covered the early period of Netanyahu’s career. Likewise, the British National Archives staff helped me do the same for a British perspective on the same period.
In Israel, I would also like to extend my grateful thanks to the staff at the Government Press Office for their prompt assistance with requests and queries, and for helping me source some superb images of Netanyahu from their extensive National Photo Collection.
At Bloomsbury, it continues to be an enormous pleasure working with my editor, Robin Baird-Smith. This is my third book with Robin, and it is a most enjoyable and rewarding experience to work with him again. Thanks also to assistant editor Jamie Birkett, and all the team at Bloomsbury in London. At Bloomsbury in the US, I would like to give a particular note of thanks to George Gibson and his team in New York. It has been a pleasure to work with such a professional publishing house.
Thanks also to Matt Freeman who continues to do a fantastic job of helping to develop and evolve my website and social media.
At University College London, I would like to thank my colleagues. I am fortunate to work in a department that covers a variety of different disciplines, and one that has ancient and modern historians. There is a great deal that we learn from one another, and University College London continues to allow us to follow our research interests.
I remain most grateful to David Lewis for continuing to support my position at the College.
I would also like to thank the students of my Arab–Israeli Conflict class. I have found their questions and comments extremely stimulating and useful. Over the 15 years that the class has run there have been many changes to the course, but the study of Benjamin Netanyahu has remained a central feature of it.
On a personal note, I would like to thank my friends and family for their kindness and support, and most especially for their understanding for my long absences from home when I travel overseas for my research and during the various writing stages of the book – when I lock myself away in my study. Most of all, I am grateful for the love and support of my family: my mother, and my parents-in-law Patrick and Gillian Castle-Stewart.
A big debt of gratitude must go to my wife, Emma, and our two children, Benjamin and Hélèna. Emma, as well as keeping our home in one piece while I work, research and write, is also my agent – she helps me with the photographic research for my books, curates my exhibitions, reads my manuscripts, manages my website, organizes my talks, and much more. This book would not have been possible without her. My children are growing up fast and I am incredibly proud of them – they are both fantastic in knowing when to let their daddy get on with his writing tasks.
Neill Lochery
London
June 2016