The Spanish Game

Acknowledgements

Paddy Woodworth’s superb book Dirty War, Clean Hands (Yale Nota Bene, 2002) offers a comprehensive history of ETA and the GAL, and was indispensable in the writing of The Spanish Game. My thanks also to the incomparable Isambard Wilkinson, who guided me through the complexities of Basque politics on an eye-opening visit to Alava and Guipúzcoa. Lucy Wadham, author of the fine novel Castro’s Dream, helped to inspire the character of Luis Buscon. Jamie Maitland Hume played a crucial role in the development of the plot. Nothing, however, would have been written without the love and support of my wife, Melissa, who makes everything possible.

I am also very grateful to everybody at The Week, to Joshua Levitt, Juan Pablo Rodríguez, C. Hunter Wright, Liz Nash, Ken Creighton, Bathurst’s of Savile Row, Mercedes Baptista de Ybarra, Kim Martina, Bill Lyon, Ana-María Rivera, Trevor Horwood, David Sharrock, Lourdes García Sánchez-Cervera, Juliane von Reppert-Bismarck, Jamie Owen, Emily Garner, Gonzalo Serrano, Carolyn Hanbury, the Petrie family, the Mills family, Alexa de Ferranti, Ian Cumming, Richard Nazarewicz, and to Laura and all the Johns at Finbar’s.

Samuel Loewenberg, Rupert Harris, Smriti Belbase, Sid Lowe, Henry Wilks, Boris Starling and Natalia Velasco read early drafts of the novel and offered invaluable comments and observations. My baby son, Stanley, ate several pages of the manuscript. Then the usual suspects took over: Tif Loehnis at Janklow and Nesbit; Rowland White at Michael Joseph. My thanks also to Rebecca Folland, Christelle Chamouton and Molly Beckett, and to Georgina Atsiaris, Sarah Hulbert, Clare Pollock and Tom Weldon.

As I was putting the finishing touches to the manuscript, I learned that my close friend Pierce Loughran, who had helped so much in the creation of both The Hidden Man and The Spanish Game, had died suddenly. He was 36. Pierce was a man of great kindness and astonishing erudition, and I was lucky to know him. He will be greatly missed.

C.C.

London, October 2005