Acknowledgements

I am deeply indebted to the many friends and relations of Sheila Fitzgerald (née Goold Verschoyle) who helped with recollections. None of them is responsible for the factual errors or falsifications. Particular thanks are due to Derek Johns, Clare Reihill, Catherine Heaney, Mandy Kirkby and Philip Gwyn Jones for their faith in my work, and to Trinity College, Dublin and All Hallows College, Dublin, where at stages during the writing of this book I was respectively the Writer Fellow and the fellow who writes.