Amazing Tales for Making Men Out of Boys (44 page)

John Paul Jones, Josiah Harlon, Omaha Beach,
and
The Alamo
© Alexis Seabrook.

Captain Scott
by L. Du Garde Peach, 1963. Illustrations by John T. Kenney. Reproduced by kind permission of Ladybird Books Ltd

The Story of Ships
by Richard Bowood, 1961. Illustrations by Robert Ayton. Reproduced by kind permission of Ladybird Books Ltd

Wreck of the Birkenhead
© reproduced with permission from The Thomas Ross Collection

The Story of Napoleon
by L. Du Garde Peach, 1968. Illustrations by John T. Kenney. Reproduced by kind permission of Ladybird Books Ltd

The Story of Nelson
by L. Du Garde Peach, 1957. Illustrations by John T. Kenney. Reproduced by kind permission of Ladybird Books Ltd

The Story of Flight
by Richard Bowood, 1960. Illustrations by Robert Ayton. Reproduced by kind permission of Ladybird Books Ltd

All other images © Look and Learn. Reproduced by kind permission of Ladybird Books Ltd

The easy part of a book like this one is the writing. Long before I started typing, I had a pin-sharp idea in my head of how the stories would
sound
. There’s a very specific tone that always works for me in an adventure story when I hear it—and all I had to do with
Amazing Tales
was listen to the voices in my head. For most of the time, I just took dictation.

Like I said, that was the easy part, and it was my part. The hard jobs were everyone else’s problem, and to all of those individuals I owe a huge debt of thanks. My editor at Michael Joseph, the original publisher of
Amazing Tales
, is Rowland White and if it hadn’t been for him, this wouldn’t have seen the light of day. From our first words at our first meeting, I knew that Rowland could hear the same voices in his head. In fact, with the benefit of hindsight it’s clear to me now that before I started speaking to him that day, he already knew these stories, and how they should sound. Throughout the process, we have talked together like overgrown schoolboys, and it has been his boundless enthusiasm for, and commitment to, the project that made the whole enterprise huge fun from start to finish.

My literary agent at William Morris, lovely Eugenie Furniss, had the wisdom to put Rowland and me together in the first place—and so to her too goes another huge helping of my thanks. She listened to, understood and reassured me all the way, and the sheer force
of her no-nonsense commonsense bowled me along helplessly. Massive gratitude, as usual, goes to my agent, dearest Sophie Laurimore, also at William Morris, who has looked after me for longer than anyone else and who has followed the progress of this project with the kind of enthusiasm I might have expected from a fellow chap.

Both Sophie and Eugenie are, most important as far as I’m concerned, the mothers of sons. Two more potential readers—so obviously, well done there.

With a book like this, almost above all other considerations it had to look right. It had to have the appearance of a treasured annual returning to the sunlight after long incarceration in a trunk in the attic. And so it does. This is down to Andrew Smith, who took care of the overall design, and to Tom Sanderson, who created the jacket. Further thanks are owed to Nick Lowndes, for copy editorial; James Blackman, for production; Chantal Gibbs, for researching all the pictures; Annie Lee, for scrupulous attention to detail when editing my stream of consciousness; Jennifer Doyle, for marketing and Catherine Duncan, for publicity. I am also in debt to Naomi Fidler and Ana-Maria Rivera and the whole of the Penguin sales team.

To Trudi, Evie, Archie and Teddy, all my love.

All I can offer to all of the people above are my grateful thanks. Responsibility for any and all mistakes and omissions is down to me, and me alone.

Cover design by Robert Venables

Cover illustration by Tom Sanderson

AMAZING TALES FOR MAKING MEN OUT OF BOYS
. Copyright © 2009 by Neil Oliver. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

From “The Call of the Wild” by Robert Service, used by permission of Estate of Robert Service.
From
Under Milk Wood
by Dylan Thomas, published by Orion.
Reproduced by permission of David Higham Associates.

Picture permissions can be found in Acknowledgments.

Mobipocket Reader April 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-187679-0

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