I am very grateful to Charles Owen and Vijay Raichura for information and advice concerning linguistic and medical aspects of the novel respectively, and to several others for their notes and comments on various drafts: Bernard Bergonzi, Tony Lacey, Julia Lodge, Alison Lurie, Geoff Mulligan, Jonny Pegg,Tom Rosenthal, Mike Shaw, Paul Slovak and, as always, my wife Mary. And thanks to my grand-daughter Fiona for a pun on Marks & Spencer.
D.L.
September, 2007