Among the many who have helped me with this book, I am particularly grateful to the following for their help and advice: John Lucas, Jenny and Nick Moore Morris, my editor Robin Robertson, Philip Stevens, Margot Venus, Richard Wistreich, Paul Wright, and my children Joshua, Sacha and Anastasia for reminding me how the young see things.
With a special thanks to my wife Jo Wistreich, whose unerring eye, sure judgement, and long-suffering support have guided this book from start to finish. Also to Niek Miedema and my agent Bill Hamilton for critical support at critical moments throughout.
For the methodology of seventeenth-century acting and its link with ancient medicine, I am deeply indebted to the first chapter of The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting, by Joseph R. Roach (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1993). For the lines from Patrice Kayo’s poem ‘The Song of the Initiate’, I am grateful to the Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry edited by Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier (Penguin, 1984). Other books that have travelled with me all the way: Prehistoric Britain by Jacquetta Hawkes (Pelican, 1943), Four Guineas: A Journey through West Africa by Elspeth Huxley (Chatto & Windus, 1954), African Creeks I Have Been Up by Sue Spencer (David McKay, New York, 1963), La Puissance du Sacré: l’Homme, la Nature et l’Art en Afrique Noir by Clémentine Faik-Nzuji (Maisonneuve et Larose, 1993), The History of the British Countryside by Oliver Rackham (J.M. Dent, 1986), English Downland by H.J. Massingham (Batsford, 1936).