by Alis Hawkins
‘We are a visually acute species and our social intercourse is predicated on that sense.’ Do you agree with Harry? How does his experience of blindness confirm or challenge this?
The Rebecca Riots, despite being the most widespread and persistent form of civil disobedience seen in Britain in what was a riotous era, are not much celebrated in the area where they took place. Does None So Blind shed any light on why this might be the case?
Lydia tells Harry and John that, ‘People see what they want to see.’ How does this relate to any or all of the happenings in None So Blind?
Did the revelation about Nathaniel Howell make you re-assess his attitude to Harry and leadership of a Rebecca band?
Margaret Jones tells Harry that she has to ‘make her own way’ in the world. Esme Williams calls her ‘a young woman who had her eye on the main chance’, while Mari Thomas dismisses her as a girl who was ‘always going to come to a bad end.’ Does Margaret arouse your pity or your censure?
One of the drivers behind Harry’s investigation is his need to know how much responsibility he bears for Margaret Jones’s death. What’s your verdict?
Is Davy Thomas more his mother’s creation or Harry’s?
If Davy had still been in Cardiganshire rather than in New York, do you think Harry would have handed him over to the magistrates?
Acknowledgements
I know it’s customary to end acknowledgements with thanks to one’s nearest and dearest in a ‘last but not least’ gesture but I’m going to buck the trend. More thanks than I can reasonably convey are due to my partner, Edwina, for all her support, love and understanding. She keeps me sane, allows me acres of space to write, think, and wool-gather and takes me on long walks. This is significant as I have no sense of direction and, left to myself, go on the same two-mile walk every day.
As every author will know, the support of one’s family is crucial and I’m hugely grateful to my sons, Sam and Rob for their continuing moral support, sympathy when things in the publishing sphere looked bleak and failure, ever, to ask why I wasn’t giving up. Thanks, too, to my parents, to whom this book is dedicated, for teaching me, without words, that if you want something, you have to go after it.
Friends have also offered huge moral and practical support in reading the book and making helpful suggestions. Big thanks go to Viv Kent, Jo Fawcett, Judith Lee, Aliya Whiteley, Tim Stretton and Dee Swift for being my enthusiastic first readers and helpful, honest commenters. Even greater thanks to the wonderful Eliza Graham, a busy and successful author, for heroically volunteering to copy-edit a late draft before I sent it out into the big bad world.
Without research, a historical novelist is nothing and I must thank the Wikipedia Foundation for their tireless and increasingly accurate work. People always sniff at using Wikipedia as a source but, as a point of first contact, I find it invaluable. My other great resource, not simply for this book but for the whole Teifi Valley series, is Dr Pam Fisher of Leicester University whose PhD thesis The Politics of Sudden Death: The Office and Role of the Coroner in England and Wales, 1726-1888 I have found to be the most amazing treasure trove of information in what is otherwise a desert unless you start spending unfeasible amounts of time in archives. Any errors which have crept into the text, it goes without saying, are mine alone.
I have been tremendously fortunate in my editor. Russel D Maclean writes very different books from my own but this has not stopped him truly understanding what I am trying to do and editing with a light touch so as not to get in the way.
His insight has made me a better editor of my own work and I am truly grateful to be working with him on the series.
Finally – and this really is a case of last but not by any means least – my thanks to David Headley and Rebecca Lloyd at The Dome Press who have been full of enthusiasm for taking the Teifi Valley series on in the wake of the demise of my original publisher. It is a genuine joy to be working with independent publishers of ambition, vision and genuine commitment to their authors.
Published by The Dome Press, 2018
Copyright © 2018 Alis Hawkins
The moral right of Alis Hawkins to be recognised as the author
of this work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Map of Teifi Valley by Meredith Lloyd James
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organisations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781912534043
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