Many friends, human and otherwise, have helped and inspired me over the years. In particular, two great and gloriously unique British institutions moulded me, somehow – Christ's Hospital school, in West Sussex, and the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty. Above all I must thank my late mother, Helen Oates, and my dear wife, Sally, for putting up with an awful lot for far too long. I also gratefully acknowledge the support of my lifelong friends Dr Nigel Fleming and Derek Longhurst, and of my close butterflying friends Dr Andy & Linda Barker, Dr Sue Clarke, Lynn Fomison, Doug Goddard, Dr Simon Grove, Neil Hulme, Gail and Stephen Jeffcoate, Caroline Steel and Ken Willmott, along with ecological mentoring support I have received from John Bacon, Alan Stubbs, Professor Jeremy Thomas and Dr Martin Warren. My friends and colleagues from the National Trust have helped more than they could possibly imagine, notably Dr David Bullock, Mike Collins and Katherine Hearn. I must thank Andrew Branson, founder of British Wildlife, for his unwavering belief in this venture, Patrick Barkham for opening the genre of imaginative writing on butterflies and for his enthusiastic encouragement, my artist and butterflying friend Tim Bernhard, copy-editor Hugh Brazier for his patient translation of gibberish into English, Abe Davies, Katy Roper and Nick Wright of British Wildlife Publishing, and Vicky Beddow, Jamie Criswell and Jim Martin of Bloomsbury. Brokenborough Poets commented helpfully on draft poems. Charlie Burrell and the Burrell family, Fermyn Woods Contemporary Art, the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), Sufi Way and the Test Match Special commentary team have conspired, somehow, to keep me marginally on the right side of sanity.
Beyond all else, this book is the product of the profound fellowship provided by the charity Butterfly Conservation, its staff, branches and members. The places which have inspired, supported and tutored me are identified in this book, and are duly acknowledged here. At times the butterflies themselves obliged me, even some caterpillars.
I am grateful to Bryan Holden and the BB Society (www.bbsociety.co.uk), and Hollis & Carter for permission to quote from chapter 10 of Brendon Chase by ‘BB’; to Peters, Fraser & Dunlop for permission to quote from Hilaire Belloc's The Four Men; to the Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of John Masefield for permission to quote from Masefield's poem ‘King Cole’; to the Trustees of the Pooh Properties for the quote from Winnie-the-Pooh by A A Milne, text copyright © 1926 published by Egmont UK Ltd London and used with permission; to Penguin Books Ltd for permission to quote 47 words (pp. 28–29) from Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson (Puffin, 2001), text and illustrations copyright © Tove Jansson, 1948, English translation copyright © Ernest Benn Ltd, 1950; and to Penguin Random House UK for permission to quote from the poem ‘Spring goes, summer comes’ from Flower Fairies of the Summer by Cicely Mary Barker, first published by Frederick Warne of London in 1925.
Matthew Oates
February 2015