I am grateful to Park Honan for permission to quote numerous passages from his unpublished letters to me, and for checking the accuracy of my references to him and his family. Sadly he died, at the age of 86, as I was checking the proofs of this book. I am also grateful to Curtis Brown on behalf of the Estate of Malcolm Bradbury, another deceased friend, for permission to quote extracts from his unpublished letters to me. Kath Chater gave me expert assistance in tracing my ancestry. Patricia Allen, Jean Pearson, and two ladies whom I first knew by their maiden names as Mary Wood and Jenefer Smith helped me to recover facts about my parents and grandparents, and to revive my own childhood memories, by their reminiscences and generous gifts of photographs. Carol Green, Jeswyn Jones, Daniel Moynihan, John Sutherland and Derek Todd kindly supplied information which I requested. Dominic Bradbury, Paul Hoggart and Corinna Honan responded very helpfully to my appeal for photographs of their parents as they were half a century ago.
I am grateful to my agent Jonny Geller for his encouragement and advice on this project from its inception, to my editor Geoff Mulligan for numerous suggestions for improving the text, and to Liz Foley, Publishing Director at Harvill Secker, for her enthusiastic support of the book and management of its progress to publication. My wife Mary is always the first reader of my books, but her contribution to this one was especially valuable, as a source of facts during its composition as well as for her comments when it was completed.
D.L.