Acknowledgements

Some very small amounts of the material in this book have appeared previously, in substantially different form, in Men’s Health and Getaway magazines – my thanks to Jason Brown and Justin Fox. The timing of some of the events of this book have been adjusted to provide a continuous narrative.

One of the sentences in Chapter 5 starting “I’ve seen the best minds of my generation …” is a parody of the opening line from Allen Ginsberg’s Howl – I hope I don’t need to mention that, since the joke doesn’t work if it’s not recognised, but you can never be too careful. The final sentence of the book is an echo of the final line of Hemingway’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises. While writing this book I started reading Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life, subtitled “Life is long if you know how to use it”. I didn’t finish it, but it’s a good idea.

My thanks to Stephen Haw at The Times for what he gave back to me and to Marlene Fryer and Robert Plummer for their faith and the lifeline, and to John Vlismas and Ami Kapilevitch for agreeing to read the manuscript, although in the end I never sent it. My heartfelt thanks to Gretchen van der Byl for her cover design. Please feel free to judge this book by its cover.

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