Grey Area

Author’s Note

It is a rare thing nowadays to be commissioned to write any short fiction at all, so my thanks go to Tony Peake who asked me to write ‘Incubus’, for the Serpent’s Tail anthology Seduction, and who arranged the commissioning of ‘The Indian Mutiny’ for the Constable anthology Winter’s Tales. Maria Lexton commissioned ‘A Short History of the English Novel’ for the Time Out Book of London Short Stories, and subsequently also published it in Time Out. Bill Buford ran a much abridged version of ‘Scale’ in Granta, although the piece was originally commissioned by Martin Jaques for a limited pictorial edition. All the other stories were written with this collection in mind.

Thanks are due to Sarah Milwidski who assisted with the preparation of the manuscript at a crucial juncture, to Liz Calder, Mary Tomlinson and all at Bloomsbury; and of course to Ed Victor and Morgan Entrekin for keeping the faith.

W.W.S., Suffolk 1994