Acknowledgements

I HAVE BEEN greatly helped, in researching and writing this book, by many people. Dolf Placzek’s telephone call to me in June 1998 launched me into the project when I was hovering round the edge. He and Bev were inspiring, and sympathetic to the biographer’s need to get to the bottom of Jan’s complicated character. Dolf’s last telephone message to me before he died expressed (in his thick-as-ever Viennese accent) delight that the story was being told. I am also grateful to Bennes Mardenn, Harriet Harvey, Susan Stern, Ruth Hanbury-Tenison, John Maxtone Graham, Michael Maxtone Graham, David Townsend, Ian Anstruther and Merlin Sudeley, for helping me with research and talking to me so candidly about Jan; to Nicola Beauman, for giving me initial confidence in the project; to Rupert Christiansen, for solidifying that confidence; and to Grant McIntyre, for his well-judged guidance. My father Robert Maxtone Graham, expert archivist, verifier and indexer, was an invaluable eye-witness and a constant but never intrusive support. Janet Rance’s notes, and Jamie Maxtone Graham’s papers, lent to me by his son Robert, helped me greatly, as did Victoria Rance’s, Anthony Gardner’s, Geoffrey Barraclough’s and my mother Claudia Maxtone Graham’s insights and comments. Kathleen Dunpark undertook some research for me at the Court of Session in Edinburgh. Henry Villiers gave me access to his aunt Anne Talbot’s diaries. Joy Grant provided me with notes which she had made on Jan. David Drew-Smythe of New South Wales gave me access to documents inherited from his grandfather Douglas Anstruther, and compiled the Jan Struther website. David and Daphne Smith gave me time to write during the school holidays. I am grateful also to the Library of Congress, the London Library, the A.P. Watt archives, the Chatto & Windus archives, the British Film Institute Library and the FDR Library. My husband Michael (who played piano duets with Dolf during our last visit to him in New York in 1999) helped me each day in the quest for the essence of Jan and the mots justes to express it. This book is dedicated to him.