A reader recently emailed to inform me that a line I’d used in Slough House (“Home was where, when you went there, they had to let you in”) was more or less from a Robert Frost poem. “Anyone who has read Frost,” he solemnly assured me, “will pick this up right away.” Damn it . . . Caught red-handed. Before sentence is passed, I’d like many dozens of similar offences to be taken into consideration. I won’t list them all, but the line on page 128 that Lech Wicinski remembers his father quoting—that “everyone is more or less of Polish origin”—is from Iris Murdoch’s Nuns and Soldiers.
This book is dedicated to my dear brother Paul, to his wife Emily, and to his children, Thomas and Matthew. But it’s also for the rest of our family, with love, always. The time we spend together has never been more precious.
MH
Oxford
November 2021
