The chief source of my story is Homer’s Iliad, though the tale told there is short, beginning when the war had been going on for ten years and ending with the death of Hector. Homer composed his poem (probably drawing on ballads and songs sung and recited during the pre-literate days) in about 700 BC according to the conventional dating, so there is a gap of five hundred years between The Iliad and the Trojan War itself. The rest of the story comes from the Greek dramatists, calling on the old legends. They wrote of the war and its sequel, two hundred years after Homer.
Other parts of the book are taken from Virgil, writing in Latin at the time of the Emperor Augustus – over a thousand years after the Trojan War.
I have told the bones of the story, but altering and changing it as I went along. The major change in the story is, of course, that Cassandra is alive twenty years after the war. In the original tale, although her brother Helenus and Hector’s widow did survive, Cassandra was killed in Mycenae soon after being brought as a captive from Troy.
The geography of the area I describe is probably much the same, though rivers may have changed course – the chief difference is that most places would have been more heavily wooded than they are today and other areas less denuded of grass. A combination of the human need for firewood and grazing for sheep and goats has altered the landscape.
Finally, I regret any disappointment to readers because the Trojan horse is missing. It’s a wonderful story, but it proved quite impossible to include in the book.
A Note on the Author
HILARY BAILEY was born in 1936 and was educated at thirteen schools before attending Newnham College, Cambridge. Married with children, she entered the strange, uneasy world of ’60s science fiction, writing some twenty tales of imagination which were published in Britain, the USA, France and Germany. She has edited the magazine New Worlds and has regularly reviewed modern fiction for the Guardian. Her first novel was published in 1975 and she has since written twelve novels and a short biography. She lives in Ladbroke Grove, London.
Discover books by Hilary Bailey published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/HilaryBailey
After the Cabaret
All the Days of My Life
As Time Goes By
A Stranger to Herself
Cassandra
Connections
Elizabeth and Lily
Fifty-First State
Hannie Richards
In Search of Love, Money and Revenge
Mrs Rochester
Polly Put the Kettle On
Mrs Mulvaney
The Cry from Street to Street
Miles and Flora
The Strange Adventures of Charlotte Holmes
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP
First published in Great Britain 1993 Jonathan Cape Ltd
Copyright © 1993 Hilary Bailey
All rights reserved
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make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
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may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The moral right of the author is asserted.
ISBN: 9781448209286
eISBN: 9781448209293
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