Thank you to those who made this book possible: above all to Moris and Nina Farhi; to Mai Ghoussoub, the publisher who changed the course of my life by believing in it, and to André Gaspard; to my beloved friends Barbara Goodwin and Hanna Sakyi, who helped me in completely different ways, and to Nick Rankin.
Thank you to those who made it better: my editor Christine Casley, Mike Phillips, Colin Grant, Robert Taylor, Wesley Kerr, Michael Miller, Prabirranjan Ray, Norman Mitchell, Rita Patel, Roy Kerridge for lyrics from his beautiful book The Storm is Passing Over: A Look at Black Churches in Britain, J R Shah, David Godwin and Sarah al-Hamad.
Thank you also to John Coldstream, Mark LeFanu, Peter Kemp, Jonathan Lloyd and Caroline Winterburn for their kindness. Thank you to Jonathan Warner who commissioned this book in another life, and is still missed and remembered. Lastly, thank you to Rosa for making me laugh; and to our local park keeper, whose devotion to duty and love of the park were an inspiration, though his character and personal life bear no resemblance to those of my own fictional park keeper.