My heartfelt thanks to my editor Simon Prosser for his enthusiasm and meticulous editing, and to Donna Poppy, Keith Taylor, Amelia Fairney and the team at Penguin; my dynamic agent Hannah Griffiths at Curtis Brown; my tour manager Melanie Abrahams of Renaissance One; the Museum of London, especially Chandan Mahal and the Interpretation Unit, and the curator Jenny Hall; the Poetry Society for funding my residency at the museum; the Arts Council of England for my Writers Award 2000; the British Council Literature Department for opportunities to tour abroad; the following people for acts of support: Ruth Borthwick, Colin Channer, Kwame Dawes, Catriona Ferguson, Brendan Griggs, Mel Jennings, Helen Swords and Jacob Ross; and to Patricia St Hilaire and Victoria Evaristo for keeping me sane(r) with endless telephone conversations; and to the historian Peter Fryer, author of the truly groundbreaking book Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain, where I first learnt that Africans had lived in Britain during the Roman occupation nearly eighteen hundred years ago.