Cosima Dannoritzer, Iris Schewe (of the Stadtmuseum, Berlin) and Alfred Gottwaldt (of the Deutsches Technikmuseum, Berlin) who steered me around pre-war Berlin. Gordon Chaplin who let me retreat to his Manhattan loft to write my novel, while he retreated to Florida and wrote his. Antony Harwood, my agent, once described in the Grauniad as a ‘leather-jacketed rock’n’roller with the soul of an aesthete’. He has long since given up the leather jacket. The rock’n’roll persists. John Bell, who knows really odd things about the London Underground.