AUTHOR'S NOTE
Some readers may be like me: after finishing a historical novel I always want to know how much was true. Well, a good deal of this book is based on facts, for instance, Dido and Aeneas was first produced at Josias Priest's school in Chelsea, and Purcell was buried by his organ in Westminster Abbey, and William did get some of his ciphered dispatches brought from England by disguised couriers, crossing the North Sea in swift yachts. But those who look for John Norwood in the Dictionary of National Biography will not find the hero of this story.
Some readers, again, love writing to authors and pointing out the historical howlers they have made. I had better say quickly that (while doing my best to avoid mistakes) I have had to write this book in odd moments of leisure while on military service. I have had just three books to refer to, and I am very grateful to them all—Macaulay's History of England, W. J. Turner's English Music, and Eric Blom's Music in England. I have had just one record of Purcell's music to inspire me, while for distraction I have had monkeys chattering outside my window by day and buffaloes moaning like foghorns by night. So it was seldom easy (but always pleasant) to imagine myself in the England of 1688.
Pachmari, Central Provinces, India Command.
—from the dust jacket
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