Many events and descriptions in this novel are based on real experiences and firsthand accounts. Meriel’s adventures in Queensland and South America mirror those of my intrepid grandmother, Marian Lloyd-Owen; and I still have all of her letters and photographs from Colombia. For the period of the First World War, I’ve had access to letters from my cousin, the poet, John Masefield, and my grandfather, Gordon Masefield; also to the poems of his brother, Charlie, who was killed in 1917. (Ned’s description of his billet at Warloy, is based on Charlie’s evocative poem, Candle-Light, which I have quoted in full before these notes.)
For my accounts of Sussex agriculture in the early Twentieth Century, I am grateful for the help of two grand old men of the land; the farmer Mortimer G. Lee, and the character who has been described as ‘the last of the downland shepherds’, Mr J. W. Coleman of Glynde.
I’m more than grateful to Clare Christian of Red Door Publishing for all the help she’s given me with this edition of the novel, and as ever to my wife, Lee, for her skilful proof-reading. I am much indebted to Rose E. B. Coombs M.B.E. and to Susan Burgess of the Imperial War Museum for further help with my First World War researches; also to Rear Admiral J. W. D. Cook C.B.E., Mary Batchelor and Lt. Col. Graham Barnett for additional advice and guidance on the subject of the war and its aftermath; and to Dr Nöel Carr, Gertrude Smith O.B.E. and Dr David Rice for much helpful advice on psychiatric and medical phenomena. Additionally my thanks are due to the following for the unfailingly generous help they have given me in my search for authentic background material for this novel: Mrs Irene Benjamin, Mrs Lucy Brecht, the Hon. C. A. Colville, Mr C. I. Davies-Gilbert, Mr Clement H. Fowler, Mrs V. E. Hogg, Mrs Henrietta Kessler, Virginia Lloyd-Owen, Mrs E. R. Lodge, The Librarian and staff of The London Library, Fiona Masefield, Sir Peter and Lady Masefield, Sybil Oldfield, Mr Hugh Stewart-Roberts, Mr A. Wesencraft and Christine Wilson.
I am also grateful to Frederick Warne P.L.C. for their permission to quote from The Tale of Two Bad Mice by Beatrix Potter. The verse in Chapter Twenty-One comes from Sussex at War and Poems of Peace by Arthur Beckett, published by Sussex County Herald Offices in 1916.