The Night Stages (42 page)

There is one reference to fabulous farmer, footballer, and folklorist Padraig O’Connell. He will have to look carefully to find it.

Significant sections of this book could not have been written had I not come across the highly engaging and brilliantly researched volume by Tom Daly entitled
The Rás
, published in 2003 by The Collins Press, Cork, Ireland. I owe Mr. Daly a great debt for providing the factual details concerning this demanding and delightful Irish sporting event. I am also indebted to Ted Fraser for conversation, and especially for his beautifully written and insightful
Garden of Light
, the important catalogue that accompanied the 2005 Kenneth Lochhead retrospective.
Turner in Germany
by Cecilia Powell (Tate Gallery Publications, 1996) was also a source. Bill Terry in Sechelt, British Columbia, was extremely helpful and more inspiring than he knew when he shared a family story, and Noreen O’Sullivan in the Cahersiveen Library helped me track down some of the places associated with that story. In Gander, librarian Pat Parsons was both welcoming and instructive, as was the staff at the University of Regina Archives where Kenneth Lochhead’s papers are housed.

A few patient people read and commented on the
manuscript in its early stages. Among them I would particularly like to thank Joanne Lochhead for her warmth and generosity, Marilyn Dickson for sharing her expertise concerning aircraft and female aviators, Michael Phillips for his charity, and Mieke Bevelander for listening. As always, thanks to copyeditor Heather Sangster for her sharp eye and her wisdom as she unearthed mistakes, factual and otherwise, and to Lynn Schellenberg who read and carefully corrected the proofs. I am extremely grateful to both, as well as to Kendra Ward for making things circulate among us all. I was extremely gratified by Ileene Smith of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and Juliet Mabey at Oneworld Publications in the U.K. responding as enthusiastically as they did to the manuscript.

Enormous gratitude goes to Ellen Levine for her long-term affection and for her brilliant expertise.

Finally, and as always, I would like to thank my publisher and editor, Ellen Seligman, for her loving attention to this book and all the others, and for a sustaining friendship that has enhanced my writing and my life for thirty years.