This is, of course, a novel, not a work of non-fiction, and I do not intend to list all the many books I turned to in writing it. In view of the subject matter, however, I think I should point out that there have been (as far as I know) seven major biographies of Turner. I used of all of them to some extent, but am particularly indebted to the first, Walter Thornbury’s much reviled but hugely entertaining (and often, I think, very perceptive) Life and Correspondence of J. M. W. Turner; to Jack Lindsay’s J. M. W. Turner: a Critical Biography, whose psychological and political insights I found invaluable; and to James Hamilton’s Turner: A Life, which is illuminated by a good deal of more recent scholarship. I also drew heavily on John Gage’s virtuosic and inspiring J. M. W. Turner: a Wonderful Range of Mind, which – although not strictly a biography – is a superb introduction to the relationship between Turner’s work and the cultural and intellectual world in which he lived.