An award from The Society of Authors assisted the writing of this book. To the Society, and particularly members of the distinguished awards panel, I express my grateful thanks.
I am grateful to the staff of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, and also to the Duchess of Argyll.
As always I express heartfelt thanks to my terrific agent, Georgina Capel, and my wonderfully supportive family: my parents, my son Aeneas and my peerless, inspirational, adored wife, Gráinne.
‘When the girl returned, some hours later, she carried a tray, with a cup of fragrant tea steaming on it; and a plate piled up with very hot buttered toast, cut thick, very brown on both sides, with the butter running through the holes in it in great golden drops, like honey from the honeycomb. The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings […] of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleeping canaries’ (Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows).
MATTHEW DENNISON
Montgomeryshire
Feast of Thomas the Apostle, 2018