I would like to thank Zoe Waldie, Jenny Hewson and everybody at RCW and at Penguin, with special thanks to Peter Straus, for committing so early and wholeheartedly to the book, and to Mary Mount, for her discerning, and considerate, editing.
Also, thank you to Maura Dooley and Pamela Johnson at Goldsmiths; Jennifer Barth; David, Dom and Aodhnait; my family; the Tiptons; and Arnold Kellett, whose Yorkshire Dictionary of Dialect, Tradition and Folklore proved a useful and interesting aid.
And above all, for everything, to Tips.