This book is a work of fiction. The three principal characters — Dan, Freya and Moose — are inventions. Many of the incidents in the book are entirely imagined too. There are large gaps in what is known about the bombing of the Grand Hotel and I have tried, over the last few years, to imagine myself into those gaps. For those seeking reliable guides to the situation in Northern Ireland, past and present, there are many good non-fiction books available. One of the most extraordinary is Lost Lives, a work by David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton and David McVea. It aims to record every death suffered during more than thirty years of conflict.
In 2009, Jo Berry, whose father was among those killed in the explosion at the Grand Hotel, founded an organisation named Building Bridges for Peace. In fulfilment of the organisation’s mission she now works side by side with Patrick Magee to promote peaceful conflict resolution throughout the world. www.buildingbridgesforpeace.org
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks go to:
Jason Arthur, Diana Miller, Laura Deacon, Emma Finnigan, Rebecca Ikin, Vincent Kelleher, Laurie Ip Fung Chun, Anna-Sophia Watts, Suzanne Dean, Tom Avery and everyone who worked on this novel at William Heinemann and Knopf;
Clare Alexander and the team at Aitken Alexander Associates;
Gillian Stern, Dwyer Murphy, Anjali Joseph and Dan Sheehan;
The Society of Authors and the K. Blundell Trust;
Brigid Hughes, Rob Spillman and Michael Archer;
Amy and the family.
In the last few years, excerpts from earlier drafts of High Dive have appeared in A Public Space, Tin House and Narrative. Work feeding into the novel has also been published by Guernica and Granta. Without the support of these literary journals, and of all the people listed above, I wouldn’t have finished the book.