FIRST, OF COURSE, was the great opportunity offered me by Their Royal Highnesses, Prince Hassan and Princess Sarvath. Without their confidence in me, there would be no book, nor could I have understood the depth and complexity of their work for their people and for the many hundreds of thousands of refugees now living in Jordan. It was their PA from my high school who first tracked me down, who didn’t want to be named, but who always encouraged me to write about it. She will, I hope, enjoy the result.
That clever, canny CEO, Louise Adler, suggested this book to me when I first returned home and my publisher Sally Heath gave me all the professional support and encouragement I needed to see it through. That Louise and Sally are not still at the helm of the MUP they built is a sad irony.
It has been a difficult book to write but many people kept me going. Dame Carmen Callil, Dr Rajyashree Pandey and Helen Wire in London, Lyndall Passerini in Italy cheered me on, read drafts and made crucial suggestions. Merran and Gareth Evans offered me their holiday house as a retreat near my favourite strip of the coast when I was drawing on diaries and journals and finding the shape of the story. Above all, it was my family and my friend Colin Oering whose conviction that it was a book worth writing kept me at it. I thank you all.