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In early 2019 attention turned to finalising the images and maps. Special thanks here must go to James Norton – who arrived in January like an angel of mercy to help with sourcing many of the photographs and images needed. He could have been daunted, as I was, at the prospect of organising so many images – photographing documents, finding better quality images in archives, contacting copyright-holders – but all was done in a spirit of Zen-like calm. Thank you also to James Marriott for helping me conceptualise how the text and images could work together more effectively. Thanks also to Emma Sangster and Abiy and the team at Kodak Express, Mornington Cresent for work on digitising my slide images from 15 years ago. A chance meeting with the brilliant Joff Winterhart led to the fox-tracks map at the beginning of Book One – thanks so much for that, and for musical inspiration too! And in the last weeks, Darren Bennett at DKB Creative deepest gratitude for your masterly work on the maps – I loved discussing these with you (and our football chat too – fingers still crossed for both of our teams) …
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There are many others I would also like to thank – friends and colleagues who have contributed so much. Donald Reeves and Peter Pelz – your work at St James’s Piccadilly was something very special; but your work with the Soul of Europe, supposedly in your ‘retirement’, on peace and reconciliation in the Balkans – in Bosnia, Serbia, Republika Srpska and Kosovo has been inspirational to so many, a beacon of light in the darkness. Your friendship has meant an enormous amount and taught me so much.
Alan Boldon, Sue Palmer, David Williams and Alan Read – who I originally met through teaching work at Dartington College (when Dartington was still concerned with education) – all four passionately committed educators who I’ve learned a great deal from over the years. (and also thanks to Michaela Crimmin, Scott Lash, Jeremy Deller and Alan B. for those conversations at the back of the bus on the RSA trip to China many years ago. I can still remember them vividly …)
Nicki Jackowska, John Fennelly and Emma McFarland, thank you so much for your engagement with many issues connected to my writing life over the last years – from musing over the question of titles and subtitles, to helping me navigate the unfamiliar waters of interactions with agents and publishing companies. Your guidance and advice has been invaluable.
Dr Chris Seeley and Dr Vicki Culpin (of Ashridge Business School) and Dr Kate Mackenzie Davey (of Birkbeck College, University of London) – my appreciation for invitations to speak to students at Ashridge, and also for the important work we initiated together on the research project ‘Ethical Compartmentalisation in Business Leadership’.
My gratitude also for your inspiration, support and friendship to all the following. Firstly to my beloved aunt and uncle, Eleanor and Casimir Hollack (Fif and Casey), who after sixty-two years of marriage, died only seventeen days apart, in October 2018. Despite the great sadness, it also seemed fitting to be working on the very last parts of this book, while clearing out your beautiful flat (full of books and memories) in west London. Also my love, gratitude and respect to Diane Wittner, Jon Acheson, Gabriel & Baird (my ‘Baltimore family’), Lucy Fairley (activist extraordinaire and friend to the most vulnerable in our society), Stuart Eames (for opening my mind to the literature of the Holocaust all those years ago in Cambridge), Nella Bielski (happy memories of ‘Hotel Spinoza’), Jerome Kohn (thank you for wonderful conversations and reflections on Hannah Arendt), Ben Barkow and Colin Clarke (and all the past and present Wiener Library staff – thank you for all your archival assistance over so many years), John Parry, Liz Anklow and family (for all the New Jersey times), Nigel Beanland and Lucy Johnson (for exceptional insight and support), Kevin Kemp and Ken (‘The Buddhas of Victoria Park’), Marcelo Bielsa (for re-igniting my passion for The Beautiful Game – here’s to next season!), and to Leonard Cohen & Bob Dylan for being the inexhaustible musical companions of my life – the Schubert and Beethoven of our times. And my warmest appreciation and respect for you and your work also to Melissa Benn and Paul Gordon, Mike Dibb and Cheli Duran, Catherine and Erich Fried, Bill Hewitt, Luke Holland, Hannah Hurtzig, Miche Fabre-Lewin, Peter Kennard, Jelena Mackin, Louis Charalambous, Yves Froidevaux, Colin Spencer, Stephen Watts, Jean McCrindle, Andrea Zimmerman, Grant Gee, Harriet and Colin Ward, Lucy Neal, Julia Rowntree and Rose Fenton. And thank you to all the students, teachers and staff I ever worked with at Peter Street – some incredible times in that old corner of Soho …
I would also like to thank Andy Rowell (for fearless journalism, especially on Nigeria, Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni struggle for self determination, and for wise advice), Sheila O’ Donnell in California (for help with research into one of the desk killers), Alex Wade at Reviewed & Cleared – regardless of later challenges I appreciated the legal expertise you provided to try and allow a strongly political work to come into the world with its voice in tact. My gratitude also to my scrupulous copy editor David Milner (any errors that may still remain are certainly not yours), and to Declan Ryan for helping to resolve a technical challenge at just the right time. Finally thanks to Alice Howe and all of the foreign rights team at David Higham Associates.
I also think it’s important to recognise the role that anger can play in spurring creativity on – and also in activism more generally. (I remember Anita Roddick once saying that the secret of successful activism and a fulfilling life was anger and the best quality tomatoes). I’d like to thank all those who have doubted this work over the last two decades, or put obstacles in my way – you’ve only succeeded in strengthening my resolve! I would also like to credit the role of all the corporations and governments who continue to treat people with contempt, and who in their headlong rush to free-marketise the entire planet, believe that we will forget their crimes. They have only redoubled my determination to finish this work. They will never understand those words of Anne Michaels – ‘History is amoral: events occurred. But memory is moral.’
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In Wales thank you to Angus and Jenny for Fron Oleu, which gave me a breathtaking introduction to Pen Llŷn (and for the loan of all the furniture too!), and to Martin (for other help with the move), and thank you to Judith and Raymond for activism and good company, to David, Sara, Helen and all at Browsers Bookshop, Porthmadog, for keeping me supplied with pens, books and maps, to Dafydd and all at Felin Uchaf for inspiration and making the Gwlad beirdd a chantorion a living reality, to Gary at Efail Rhos garage (for working miracles with my ancient car), to John in Llanbedrog (for helping to keep my 2005 laptop going), to the late-night Spar in Abersoch (for keeping me in smokes and beer), and to Llinos for teaching me Welsh (yes I know – it’s a work in progress) …
My deep gratitude to the place of the waters, which has given me so much inspiration over the last few years, and also to the ravens of Carn Fadryn, the choughs on Cilan, the hares of Ystum-cegid, the peregrines at Pen y Cil, the ospreys on the Glaslyn, the bursts of blackthorn blossom in early spring, the swallows dipping down the path to Porth Ysgo, the hills of purple heather and deep yellow gorse in summer, the churches at Llanfaelrhys, Llandudwen and Llangwnnadl and all the lanes and tracks and paths I’ve walked these last years, my companions through many dusks.