Warlight(67)

Many thanks to Simon Beaufoy, who introduced me to John and Evelyn McCann and Jay Fitzsimmons while I was researching canals and tides and life on barges, as well as other river information; they were invaluable guides. Also Vicky Holmes for making available river archives during the war at The Museum of London Docklands, West India Quay. Thanks also to the London Metropolitan Archives, and to those who worked at Waltham Abbey and the Gunpowder Mills when I was there in April 2013, especially Michael Seymour and Ian MacFarlane.



I want to thank everyone who helped and welcomed me whenever I was in Suffolk during my research—especially Liz Calder and Louis Baum, Irene Loftus, John and Genevieve Christie, and the remarkable Caroline and Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy. Special thanks to Simon Loftus, who spent many days guiding me through The Saints and its complex and intricate history as well as sharing his encyclopaedic knowledge of the region.

Thanks to Susie Schlesinger and her tin house, guarded during the years of this writing by Bellamy, the fabled ox; Skip Dickinson, who many years ago took me to a greyhound museum in Abilene; and Mike Elcock for his long-ago letter about a “couturier”; to David Thomson, Jason Logan, David Young, Griffin Ondaatje, Lesley Barber, Zbyszek Solecki (whose father may have bought a dog from The Darter), Duncan Kenworthy, Peter Martinelli, Michael Morris, and Coles and Manning for a borrowed idea. Thanks also to The Point Reyes Light, and to Jet Fuel.

I’m grateful to Jess Lacher for her research, and Esta Spalding for her perceptive suggestions to do with the structuring of this book. Also to my friends Ellen Levine and Steven Barclay and Tulin Valeri, who have supported me in so many ways during the years.

Thank you to Katherine Hourigan and Lydia Buechler, who guided this book so carefully and graciously through production at Knopf, as well as to Carol Carson, Anna Jardine, Pei Loi Koay, Lorraine Hyland, and Leslie Levine. Also to David Milner in England, and Martha Kanya-Forstner at McClelland & Stewart in Toronto; as well as Kimberlee Hesas, Scott Richardson, and Jared Bland. Many thanks to Robin Robertson, my editor at Cape. As well as Sonny Mehta at Knopf.

My heartfelt thanks to Louise Dennys, my editor in Canada, who has worked with me on this book since first seeing it in manuscript two years ago, and has been its invaluable supporter at every stage.

I would like to thank and acknowledge the community of friends and writers in Toronto that I have been close to all these years.

Above all, my thanks and love to Linda from the red river shore.



A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Michael Ondaatje is the author of six previous novels, a memoir, a nonfiction book on film, and several books of poetry. His novel The English Patient won the Booker Prize; Anil’s Ghost won the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the Giller Prize, and the Prix Médicis. Born in Sri Lanka, Michael Ondaatje lives in Toronto.



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