The Europeans

Acknowledgements

I have been working on this book so long that I cannot now remember how the idea for it came about. It was only halfway through the project – about three or four years in – that I even thought a book was possible. The two people who most encouraged me in these early stages of research – my mother, Eva Figes, and my beloved agent, Deborah Rogers – have since died. I miss them terribly and wish they could have lived to see a work they inspired.

My new agent, Peter Straus, has been wonderfully supportive, as have my two editors, Simon Winder at Allen Lane and Sara Bershtel at Metropolitan, throughout the years when they saw nothing of my work and had only my assurances that it was slowly progressing.

The research for this book has been carried out without institutional support. I have no academies, trusts or councils to thank for academic grants or leave from teaching. So I am all the more grateful to my colleagues at Birkbeck for their friendship and encouragement, especially Filippo de Vivo, Fred Anscombe, Jan Rüger, Jessica Reinisch, Catharine Edwards, Chandak Sengoopta, Serafina Cuomo and Miriam Zukas for their feedback on my many applications for funding. Thanks are also due to Miles Taylor, Richard Evans, Chris Clark and Steve Smith, who generously acted as my academic referees.

I have been extremely fortunate in having the assistance of two outstanding young scholars: Antoine You, who helped with some of the detective work in the Paris archives; and Ella Saginadze, who tracked down materials for me in Moscow and St Petersburg. Thanks are also due to Claire Brodier, Maud Goodhart and Isabel Daykin, who each helped with a more specific task.

I am grateful to the following scholars for providing information on particular topics, in which they are far more expert than I am: Alexandre Zviguilsky, Nicholas Žekulin, Agnès Penot, Laura Forti, Dagmar Paulus, Jennifer Davis, Julia Armstrong-Totten, Murat Siviloglu, James Radomski, Adam Zamoyski, Ellinoor Bergvelt and Claudia Hörster. Thanks as well to the many archivists who helped my research, among them, in particular: Vilma Zanotti (Archivo Storico Ricordi), Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel, Flavie Durand-Ruel (both at the Durand-Ruel Archive), Paul Beard (Royal Opera House Archives), James Kirwan (Trinity College Library), Mary Haegert and Susan Halpert (both at the Houghton Library).

I owe a special debt of gratitude to those dear people who generously read the early draft: Stella Tillyard, Hugh Macdonald, Barbara Diana, Miles Taylor, Marie-Pierre Rey, Peter Straus and Kate Figes. Their responses were invaluable, helping me to write the later drafts. In Sara Bershtel and Simon Winder I have what I think must be the finest editorial team in the English-speaking world. In their different ways their influence on my work has been immense.

I would also like to thank Cecilia Mackay, whose picture research for The Europeans, as on many of my other books, has been of the highest quality, and Mark Handsley, the best of copy-editors.

Finally, I thank my family – Stephanie, Lydia, Alice, Kate and Stoph – for their love and support. The book is dedicated to my sister, Kate, the single constant presence in my life, who joined me in reclaiming our German nationality following the UK’s decision to leave the European Union.

That event, unforeseen (indeed, unthinkable) when I started working on this book, has added a real urgency to its writing. I hope the book will serve as a reminder of the unifying force of European civilization, which Europe’s nations ignore at their peril.

London

January 2019