To Said Aburish, who read and corrected the Beirut chapters.
To Carole Holden, Curator at the British Library, Bloomsbury, without whom several writers would vanish without trace into the BL index.
To Diana Norman, who reads everything I write in typescript and offers good advice.
To Ion Trewin, the editor who has ‘sat through’ these last three novels from start to finish, and lost nothing more than his pencil sharpener.
To Sheena McDonald, who offered me a cool, Cape Cod bolt-hole just when I needed one.