ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is the great privilege and joy of the historical fiction writer to be able to spend long hours in research, which of course usually means plundering the riches of other people’s hard labours. So, at the outset, I must acknowledge with profound gratitude the work of historians and academic writers like Eamon Duffy, Diarmaid MacCulloch, Leonard Verduin, Alister McGrath, C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton – to name only the few that come immediately to mind. You have been like many friends in my mind these last years, like Virgil guiding Dante through the underworld! But let me not leave out those who contribute to web resources like Wikipedia, and then also the great fiction writers – most notably Hilary Mantel in my case – who have brought this period to life for so many. My wife and five children deserve awards too, for bearing with me on grizzly days, sharing my research and keeping me caffeinated! Also, I must thank and praise my agents Pieter and Elria at Piquant for bearing with me, pushing good books my way and believing in this project. And then, I suppose, doubly so Tony Collins and the team at Lion for believing in this book enough to invest so much in it, and giving me such an experienced novelist-editor in Penelope Wilcock; sincerely, my thanks to you all. The world merely sees the author, but we authors know that we stand on the shoulders of giants, and only some are listed above.