Many thanks to our excellent Editor, Kit Nevile for all his help and encouragement. It is such a joy to have a dedicated editor to work with. As ever our map-maker extraordinaire, Gary Beaumont, (and how wonderful to have him in the same very small Devon village) has come up with the goods and he coped with last minute changes with his usual good humour and grace. Thanks too to our careful and talented copy-editor Jane Selley, and to Michael Bhaskar at Canelo for showing such enthusiasm about archers and medieval spying when we first floated the idea past him at a drinks party. And finally thanks to Nick Venables for designing such a great cover.
We have, perhaps unusually, to thank two different agents for helping to bring this book to fruition. Its concept and early stages were helped on its way by our wonderful first agents, Heather Adams and Mike Bryan; a delicious lunch in Bruton not long before lockdown was crucial to the development of the book. Thanks are due to them for passing us on so smoothly to Jon Wood of RCW Literary Agency. It has been a delight to work with Jon on the book and we look forward to meeting him in person one day…
A Flight of Arrows has in some way been a long time in development as it draws on our work on the battle of Crécy which has been ongoing for over 40 years. It also, of course has drawn on our non-fiction book The Road to Crécy published in 2004. Some of the characters in the book (both real and fictional) have been floating around in our heads for decades and are old friends. So, perhaps thanks to all these “old friends” for being so persistent and hanging around while we found the right fictional vehicle for you.