For reading and commenting on the draft at various stages, I am most grateful to Dietlind Bock, Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Cassie Nash, Peter Mandler, Paul Ryan and most especially to Kate Hubbard who read it twice and commented expertly.
I received detailed advice on matters from international diplomacy to photography and women’s dress in the 1910s from Nikolaus Bernau, Denise Bethel, Angela Bohrer, Karl Heinz Bohrer, Oriole Cullen, Peter Damrau, Caroline Evans, Charlotte Gere, Erik Goldstein, Elise Grauer, Irene von Hardenberg, Guido Hinterkeuser, Thomas Kemper, Christine Kitzlinger, Marcus Koehler, Peter Lang, Steffen Løvkjær, Benjamin Moore, Thomas Otte, Judy Pillsbury, Samuel Wittwer and Barnaby Wright. Many thanks to all of them.
As always I am greatly indebted to my agent Felicity Rubinstein and to her colleague Sarah Lutyens. No writer could ask for better editors than Sam Redman and Clare Drysdale at Allen and Unwin.
My friends in Germany – mentioned above, and there are others – helped me to improve my knowledge of their language and guided me over many questions. It is hard to do justice to their kindness and the insights they gave me into the richness and strength of German culture.
GW