AUTHOR’S NOTE

The setting of this story is real, but I have taken certain liberties with topographical details. There are many barrows in that metropolis of our past between Avebury and the Wansdyke, but it would be profitless to look for one called The Wansdyke Great Barrow. And there is no disused airfield near Oare. I am told that it offers little legal protection against accidental libel for an author to say that his characters are fictitious, but please, mine really are.

It may be proper to give a note of explanation for the Persian Tamam Shod which appears at the end of all my books. Where a medieval Latin scribe would write Finis at the end of a manuscript the Persian habit was to put Tamam Shod – it is to be found, for instance, at the end of the Rubá’iyát of Omar Khayyám. It does not, however, mean ‘The End’, but rather the much more pleasing ‘It is become complete (or whole)’. I came across the phrase many years ago when I was trying to teach myself Persian in an Army hospital during the Second World War and I have treasured it ever since.