I wish to acknowledge particular inspiration from John Boswell’s Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality (the University of Chicago Press). I am grateful for the balance I received from Brian Patrick McGuire Friendship and Community, The Monastic Experience 350-1250 (Cistercian Publications). It was with great excitement that I returned to Jean Leclercq’s The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, New York, 1961; Aelred of Rievaulx’s Spiritual Friendship (trans. Mary Eugenia Laker SSND) Cistercian Publications; Aelred of Rievaulx’s The Mirror of Charity (trans. Elizabeth Connor OCSO), Cistercian Publications. My story of Jordan owes a debt to The History of Mary Prince (Pandora Press) and The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa the African (Longman). I wish to acknowledge further inspiration from Maud Ellman’s The Hunger Artists: Starving, Writing & Imprisonment (Virago)& Thorn Gunn’s The Man with Night Sweats (Faber & Faber); James Walvin’s Black Ivory (Fontana Press); and David Dabydeen’s Hogarth’s Blacks (Manchester University Press).
I wish to acknowledge my use of quotes from the following: Jerome Bruner’s Actual Minds, Possible Worlds: Acts of Meaning (Harvard Press); James Baldwin’s Another Country (Penguin); David M. Knowles’s The Monastic Life in England (Cambridge University Press); Peter Fryer’s Staying Power (Pluto Press); Bruce Chatwin’s What Am I Doing Here? (Picador); Gerard Manley Hopkins’s Collected Poems (Penguin); Justin McCann The Rule of Saint Benedict (Sheed & Ward); Aelred of Rievaulx’s Spiritual Friendship and The Mirror of Charity (Cistercian Pubications); Walter Daniel’s Life of Aelred (Cistercian Publications); The Jerusalem Bible (Darton, Longman & Todd); also from the singers Bobby Darrin, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Scott Mackenzie, and The Drifters; and from the calypsonians Arrow, Lord Invader, and The Roaring Lion.
I wish to thank in particular: Caroline Griffin, Margaret Busby, Ken Ramchand, Pam Kernaghan, Jill Wight who all read the manuscript, commented and encouraged. I am grateful to the monks of Mount Saint Bernard Abbey for their hospitality and use of the novitiate and monastic libraries; Bernie and Wendy Hewing for my stay at ‘Pebbles’ in Steyning; Mike Shannon for a visit to Rievaulx Abbey; Mike Green for Pop research; Astra Blaug; and Vanessa Unwin, Susan Herbert and David Shelley at Allison & Busby. Without the steadfast commitment of Elizabeth Fairbairn, my agent at John Johnson Ltd, Jenny Green’s critical devotion and my editor Peter Day’s faith, enthusiasm and understanding, I could not have completed this book. Thank you all three.