THANKS AS EVER to my first readers and trusted advisers: my supportive and eagle-eyed husband Dan and my furiously hardworking agent and editor Nick Royle. Thanks also to Arthur for being on my team. (The children in this story are fictional; Arthur is the best climber and explorer I know.) Thanks to John Oakey for another beautiful cover, and to Jen and Chris at Salt for their enthusiasm. Thanks to my late father for responding to my enquiries about Billy Graham’s visit to Manchester in 1961, to Annette for memories of seeing Billy Graham in London in the 1950s, and to Penny for proposing going to see Billy Graham in a tent in Loughborough in 1989. Thanks to the café at Manor Farm in East Leake — where a good deal of this novel was written while my son was at pre-school — for the coffee and a seat by the radiator in the New Year and the cold spring of 2013, and thanks to The Windmill in Wymeswold for having such a fine collection of curious old books.
The book about the physics of the future that Sydney mentions is Physics of the Future: The Inventions That Will Transform Our Lives by Michio Kaku, and the scientist ‘talking about rubber bands’ is Richard Feynman. ‘We that are alive, that are left, shall… be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. Then we will be with the Lord forever’ is from the New Testament (I. Thessalonians). ‘The sky-lark and thrush, / The birds of the bush’ is from ‘The Ecchoing Green’ by William Blake, and ‘breathing English air, / Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home’ is from ‘The Soldier’ by Rupert Brooke. ‘Pack up the stars, dismantle the sun’ is a misquotation of WH Auden’s ‘Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun’. ‘Have you ever tried jiu-jitsu?… I’ll show you what I can, if you like’ is from DH Lawrence’s Women in Love, and ‘great tufts of primroses under the hazels’, ‘dandelions making suns, the first daisies’ and ‘columbines and campions, and new-mown hay, and oak-tufts and honeysuckle’ are from Lady Chatterley’s Lover. ‘Tonight is mine’ is from Bram Stoker’s Dracula.