With thanks to Anne Evans and Davina Ross-Anderson, for their professional insight, to James Connell and Dave Hastings (again), for listening patiently and offering supremely sensible and useful advice, to Juliet Annan and her team at Penguin, for all their thought and care and encouragement, to Georgia Garrett, for practically everything, to the London Library, for being just about the only place where I can concentrate, and to the Dulian School of Dance, who taught me how to step-ball-change.