During the years 1941–43, my late father, Albert Winspear, was the young apprentice who inspired this story. It was only during his final weeks that we talked at length about the job he’d started as a fourteen-year-old apprentice, joining a crew of house painters who were taken from one RAF base to another around the country, applying fire retardant to the buildings. He told me that it was one of his jobs to line up a series of blowtorches close to each wall to test resistance to fire after the emulsion was applied, and described his initial shock when the torches left no mark following four hours of blasting heat. When I asked him what the paint was called and he told me it didn’t have a name, only a number, I knew that in time it would become a story. My father died from a serious blood disorder termed “idiopathic”—there is no known cause—though there is evidence to indicate that his particular incarnation of the illness is associated with exposure to toxic materials. We were fortunate it took so long to catch up with him. My parents left me with many stories of the Second World War, which deepened my appreciation of the ways in which individuals are affected by conflict, with their scars lasting a lifetime.
My cousin, Larry Iveson, inspired me to use the area around Whitchurch in Hampshire, England, as a backdrop for a novel. From the moment he told me about the town’s connection to the Bank of England and the business of manufacturing paper money, I was hooked! My “research” involved some lovely walks together around the town where he has lived for many years. Coincidentally, my father had worked at some of the airfields in the region during his apprenticeship. In addition, the experiences of one of my late aunts inspired the character of Sylvia Preston, the young WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force) in To Die But Once. My aunt drove ambulances across Salisbury Plain, collecting the bodies of soldiers who hadn’t survived their first parachute jump. Of my uncles, two were among the thousands of soldiers who stood for days on the beaches of Dunkirk waiting to be evacuated in the spring of 1940, again rendering To Die But Once personal.
In our very large extended family, almost all theaters of the Second World War were experienced by at least one of my uncles or aunts, or my parents—from Dunkirk to the Battle of Britain, the war in France, Italy, Asia, the African desert, D-day, the Blitz, and in Germany, plus of course the dark side of childhood evacuation—thus the stories that were retold during my childhood, along with those of my grandparents and their lives during the First World War continue to inspire my writing.
My thanks, as always, to my literary agent and dear friend, Amy Rennert, along with my amazing editor Jennifer Barth—I am a very fortunate recipient of their wise counsel and guidance. I have great admiration for the team at HarperCollins, including marketing wizard Stephanie Cooper, who stuns me with her new ideas, and Katherine Beitner, PR and publicity maven, whose support and encouragement mean so much to me—thank you, Katherine. Deepest thanks to Josh Marwell and his team—Josh, I truly appreciate your enthusiasm and hard work on behalf of the Maisie Dobbs series. And many thanks, as always, to Jonathan Burnham, senior vice-president and publisher of Harper Books. Creative director Archie Ferguson is one of my all-time heroes for his work on the iconic covers for the Maisie Dobbs series. And I am filled with admiration and gratitude for the imagination and skill of Andrew Davidson, artist and craftsman, who has created works of art to grace the cover of each new book—thank you for your attention to detail and for your appreciation of my work, Andrew.
My husband, John Morell, is my support on the home front, and for that he deserves a medal!
Finally, having grown up in the Kent countryside, and later living in Sussex, where my parents resided close to Rye for over thirty-five years, I have an abiding love of the area, and equally so for London, where my family’s roots run deep. Thus any geographical wide turns are usually deliberate—sometimes when writing a story, you just have to get everyone from A to B.