by Angus Donald
Angus Donald
Tonbridge, Kent, December 2012
Acknowledgements
A book is always a collaborative process – I get to have my name in big letters on the front, of course, but it wouldn’t exist without a great deal of help from a great many people. I would firstly like to thank my agent Ian Drury, of Sheil Land Associates, for his unfailing support and encouragement of the Outlaw Chronicles over the years and also his colleague in the foreign rights department Gaia Banks. My talented editors at Sphere, Ed Wood and Iain Hunt, deserve high praise for wrestling this book into its current shape, and Anne O’Brien did her usual excellent proofreading job.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Professor Joseph Goering of the University of Toronto for his marvellous book The Virgin and The Grail, which inspired me to put my Robin Hood and his Holy Grail in the same novel. On my trip to Barcelona last summer to look at some extraordinary twelfth-century images of the Grail, I was looked after very well by Anna Portabella, and lavishly wined and dined by Daniel Fernandez, my Spanish publishers. And I must also thank the kind staff at the Museu Nacional D’Art de Catalunya, who showed me around the reconstructed Pyrenean church of St Clement of Taüll in the basement of their fine museum and other jewels of their collection and patiently answered all my questions. Finally, I would like to thank Philip and Camilla Drinkall, who lent me their iPad charging lead at the auberge in Montségur and allowed me to join them for a wonderful evening, and without whom my research trip would have been far less enjoyable.