The author's untimely death prevented him from being involved in the editing of his final work. It therefore falls to me to acknowledge those who have helped so much in bringing this memoir to publication.
I would like to thank Loris Alexander, who read the manuscript with me and made many valuable suggestions; Danielle Charak, for her advice regarding Yiddish words and phrases; Louis de Vries, publisher, for believing that Alan had something important to contribute to Australian Jewish literature; Anna Rosner Blay, managing editor with Hybrid Publishers, for her empathetic response to the book and her meticulous editing; Alex Skovron, for his editorial input, advice and friendship, so generously given; Nigel Clements, for the beautiful portrait of Alan, which I also used to illustrate the obituaries; Jody Jane Stitt, for her help with the concept for the cover design; Mark Harper, for his skilful remastering of the photographs of young Alan and Alva; and of course Daniel, Peter and Toby Collins, our three sons, who have been 'sounding boards' throughout the editing process, for their support, encouragement and love.
Ros Collins
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The short story 'A Thousand Nights at the Ritz', published in The Phoenix Review (No. 1, Summer 1986/7) and subsequently in Melbourne Chronicle (No. 61, October 1991), formed the basis for part of chapter 11. The newspaper report in chapter 13 was quoted in Chronicle of the 20th Century (Penguin Books, 1990). Passages in chapters 9 and 10 concerning the beliefs and practices of the Seventh-day Adventist Church were adapted from several sources, including Time magazine (August 1926 and June 1930).
The Scarba and Ashfield children's homes feature in Alva's Boy, but Alan also spent part of his youth in a third institution, the Isabella Lazarus home at Hunters Hill. He lived there during the early 1940s and has written about this period in his autobiographical novel The Boys from Bondi.