This book is the product of many illuminating conversations and useful disagreements. My primary debt of thanks is to the practitioners and scholars who generously contributed their time, expertise and stories. They include Robert Agne, Ellis Amdur, Rob Bardsley, Emma Barrett, Teresa Bejan, Agnes Callard, Peter Coleman, Bill Donohue, Bertis Downs, Catarina Dutilh Novaes, Eleanor Fellowes, Clementine Goldszal, Ben Ho, Neil Janin, Steven Klein, Jeremy Lascelles, Terje Rød-Larsen, William Miller, Simon Napier-Bell, Mike O’Neill, Miriam Oostinga, Nickola Overall, Emmanuelle Peters, Gabrielle Rifkind, Jake Rollnick, Stephen Rollnick, Michelle Russell, Alan Sillars, Lloyd Smith, Nathan Smith, Elisa Sobo, Elizabeth Stokoe, Garry Tan, Paul Taylor, Kal Turnbull, Gregory Trevors, Bill Weger, Simon Wells, Jonathan Wender, Alfred Wilson, Warren Zanes. Thanks to Emily and Laurence Alison for sharing their work and their insights with me. Thanks to the Memphis police department, and to all the highly impressive officers who attended the Polis training and did not object to the presence of a weedy Englishman with a notebook. Thanks to Don Gulla and his team for their warmth and hospitality and for fascinating conversations over spare ribs and fried chicken. Special thanks to Susan Bro for talking to me, so eloquently, about the life and death of her remarkable daughter Heather Heyer.
Thank you to my agent Toby Mundy, who patiently helped me shape my inchoate thoughts into a viable book proposal. Thank you to everyone at Faber & Faber, especially Laura Hassan for her confidence in this book and her sustaining enthusiasm; Rowan Cope for the care and attentiveness she showed the manuscript, and for cracking the title; Marigold Atkey for her brilliant notes and moral support; Donald Sommerville for his assiduous copy edit. Thank you also to the highly professional team at HarperCollins, especially Hollis Heimbouch for positive energy and straight talk. I am lucky to have had an absurdly talented team of informal readers. Thank you, first of all, to the indispensable Stephen Brown, my emergency manuscript doctor: without you this book would not have made it out of its first draft alive, let alone become fit for publication. Thanks to Tom Stafford for science-checking a draft and for his helpful notes. Thank you to my brilliant friends Helen Lewis and Oliver Franklin-Wells and to Oli in particular for his notes on the opening chapter. Thank you to Jonathan Shainin and David Wolf of The Guardian, who commissioned and helped shape an article on interrogation which became the starting point for this book. Thanks to Teresa Bejan and Agnes Callard for reading and improving the chapters in which I cite their work. All errors are my own.
Profound thanks to Clydette de Groot, Audrey Chapuis, and the marvellous team at the American Library in Paris. I am so grateful for the opportunity to take up a fellowship there – working on this book in Paris is something I’ll remember for the rest of my life. The library and its community proved vital sources of inspiration. Thanks to Pamela Druckerman and Simon Kuper; to Simon in particular for pointing me to John Carlin’s book on Nelson Mandela. Thank you to the many friends, too many to mention here – also I’m scared of leaving someone out – who have talked through ideas, shared insights, or simply provided encouragement. Thank you to my mother Margaret and brother Stephen, who, along with my late father Bryan, grounded me in the arts of disagreement. Thank you to my children Io and Douglas, life; without you would contain fewer disagreements and yet be so much less agreeable. Thank you, finally, to my best editor and best friend, Alice Wignall, to whom I am lucky enough to be married. Alice, I love you and I look forward to many more arguments, productive and otherwise. Oh, and thanks for letting me take up that fellowship, it puts me for ever in your debt. You’ll always have Paris.