Headlong (32 page)

I had to have a lot of help with this book. I should particularly like to thank Charles Saumarez-Smith, Nicholas Penny and Michael Baxandall for their suggestions about where to look for the information I needed; Robert Erskine and William Mostyn-Owen for their guidance on the art market; a great many librarians, particularly the patient and helpful staff of the National Art Library in the Victoria & Albert Museum, and Frances Carey, Deputy Keeper in the Print Room of the British Library, who drew my attention to Jean-Michel Massing’s book
La Calomnie
d’Apelles
; to Ashok Roy in the Scientific Department of the National Gallery and Catherine McLeod at the National Portrait Gallery for their advice on painting materials and techniques of the period; to Professor M. G. L. Baillie at the Paleo-Ecology Centre of the School of Geo-Sciences in Queen’s University, Belfast, for his advice on dendrochronology (though in the end I decided not to pursue this line of inquiry); to three old friends for their help with languages: Gerda Rubinstein with the Dutch, Sarah Haffner with the German, and Nicholas Monck with the Latin; to the Librarian of Pembroke College, Cambridge, for supplying a copy of the Ortelius epitaph; to Victoria Glendinning for sharing the assistance that David Singmaster had given her with his account of the mediaeval calendar; to my accountant Darrell Nightingirl and my solicitor Michael Wood for their advice on the financial and legal aspects of the deal; to an American reader, Rudy Rucker (also writing a novel about Bruegel), for reminding me of the gibbet in
The Return of the Herd
and pointing out the false perspective in
The Magpie on the Gallows
; to Bamber Gas-coigne, for noticing that I was six popes out on the rebuilding of St Peters; and to all the art historians and others whose published researches my character and I have so freely plundered.

Michael Frayn was born in London in 1933 and began his career as a journalist on the
Guardian
and the
Observer
. His plays include
Alphabetical
Order, Clouds, Donkeys’ Years,
Make or Break
and
Benefactors. Noises Off
won the
Evening
Standard Award for Best Comedy of the Year and the Laurence Olivier Best Comedy of the Year. His more recent plays include
Copenhagen
, which won the 1998 Evening Standard Award for Best Play of the Year and the 2000 Tony Award for Best Play (USA), and
Democracy
, which opened to great critical acclaim in 2003. His latest play,
Afterlife
, opened in 2008.

He has also translated a number of works from Russian, including plays by Chekhov and Tolstoy. His films for television include
First and Last
(1989), for which he won an Emmy, and an adaptation of his 1991 novel
A Landing on the Sun
.

His novels include
Headlong
(1999), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Spies (2002), which won the Whitbread Novel Award.

He is married to the biographer and critic Claire Tomalin.

Praise for
Headlong
:

‘For those who like their fictional confectionery dark and hard-edged (though not bitter), Michael Frayn is outstanding.’ Caroline Moore,
Sunday Telegraph

‘It’s brilliant … I loved it.’ Penelope Lively,
Independent

‘Michael Frayn is the most philosophical comic writer – and the most comic philosophical writer – of our time.’ Michael Arditti,
Daily Mail

‘Frayn keeps history and comedy in exquisite balance … Only after clapping
Headlong
shut does its full complexity dawn.’ Anthony Quinn,
Mail on Sunday

‘It is a heady ride … well worth the ticket price … there is genuine intellectual pleasure for the autodidactic and dilettante in all of us.’ Alan Mahar,
Literary Review

fiction
THE TIN MEN
THE RUSSIAN INTERPRETER
TOWARDS THE END OF THE MORNING
A VERY PRIVATE LIFE
SWEET DREAMS
THE TRICK OF IT
A LANDING ON THE SUN
NOW YOU KNOW
SPIES

non fiction
CELIA’S SECRET
an investigation (with David Burke)

plays
THE TWO OF US
ALPHABETICAL ORDER
DONKEY’S YEARS
CLOUDS
BALMORAL
MAKE AND BREAK
NOISES OFF
BENEFACTORS
LOOK LOOK
HERE
NOW YOU KNOW
COPENHAGEN
ALARMS & EXCURSIONS
THE SANDBOY

translations
UNCLE VANYA (CHEKHOV)
THREE SISTERS (CHEKHOV)
THE CHERRY ORCHARD (CHEKHOV)
THE SNEEZE (CHEKHOV)
WILD HONEY (CHEKHOV)
THE FRUITS OF ENLIGHTENMENT (TOLSTOY)
EXCHANGE (TRIFONOV)
NUMBER ONE (ANOUILH)

Film and television
CLOCKWISE
FIRST AND LAST
REMEMBER ME?

opera
LA BELLE VIVETTE
(From Offenbach’S
La Belle Hélène
)