I would also like to thank my Anglo-Irish friend Bill Montgomery for his invaluable advice and fascinating anecdotes. We enjoyed a long lunch at Sotheby’s Café in London and I wrote pages of notes and a lengthy reading list of books which would help me research Irish history. I have always loved Bill and his wonderfully flamboyant wife, Daphne, because as a child they were grown-ups who always had time for us. Daphne would play the piano and encourage us to sing along and Bill would talk to us as if we were adults. They were fun and eccentric and memories of the magical summer holiday we spent with them in their house in Connemara have never left me. They are two of life’s treasures and I thank them both.
My parents are always on the end of the telephone ready to answer questions about anything from gardening and farming to helping me find the right word or simply to give an honest opinion on something I’ve written. They seem to have all the answers! My mother is the first to read the manuscript and her pen is the first to grace the pages with corrections and suggestions. It really is a labour of love and I’m so grateful that she finds the time to do it. The older I get the more I understand and appreciate the value of their love. They have made me the person that I am and therefore, because my writing is an extension of who I am, I owe them everything.
My mother-in-law, April Sebag-Montefiore, was a prolific and successful writer herself when she was younger. She manages to read my husband Sebag’s books, which are massive, so she deserves a huge thank you for making time for mine! Her encouragement and wisdom are invaluable.
I’d also like to thank Nora May Cremin and Noel Coakley for their Celtic translation of the curse, Stuart Squire for the Latin translation of the family motto, Peter Nyhan for his friendship and support, Nicky de Monfort for her advice on the Anglo-Irish and Mary Tomlinson for her thorough and sensitive copyediting.
Writing is one of my greatest pleasures – the fact that I earn my living from it is all thanks to my agent and publisher. Therefore, I would like to extend my most heartfelt gratitude to Sheila Crowley at Curtis Brown – she’s completely brilliant and I’m so fortunate to be one of her authors – and to the other hard-working people at Curtis Brown who make up a really unbeatable team: Katie McGowan, Sophie Harris and Rebecca Ritchie. Thank you Ian Chapman and my editor, Suzanne Baboneau, at Simon & Schuster UK for believing in me. Together with their colleagues Clare Hey, James Horobin, Dawn Burnett, Hannah Corbett, Sara-Jade Virtue, Melissa Four, Ally Grant, Nico Poilblanc, Gill Richardson, Rumana Haider and Dominic Brendon they have turned a hobby into a greater success than I ever dreamed. Thank you!
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the three people whose love is more precious to me than anything else on earth: Sebag, Lily and Sasha – and to give a very special thank you to my husband for taking the time and trouble when he was so busy writing The Romanovs to work on the various twists and turns that have made this book such fun to write. We are great collaborators.
Songs of Love and War Page 45