I’d like to thank Jack and Patricia Godsell for their beautiful Toadsmoor Lake which was a magical source of inspiration, and Dr Ueli Habegger who finally located the island on Lake Lucerne where the ghost horn player can sometimes be heard at dusk.

As well as Spain and Switzerland, my research took me in 1994 to Prague and on to Pardubice where British jockey, owner and trainer Charlie Mann exceeded all expectation by coming second in the Czech Grand National on It’s a Snip, and, later in 1995, came first. I must particularly thank Lord Patrick Beresford and Baroness Dory Friesen for masterminding this brilliant trip for Abercrombie and Kent, and thank Sir Derek Hodgson, Queeks Carleton-Paget and Liza Butler for being such beguiling travelling companions.

Many people wrote offering advice and anecdotes. Many numbers went down in my telephone book. Sadly I never followed them up, as in the end I had to get down and write the book.

If researching Appassionata was a joy, writing it was an absolute nightmare, because an orchestra consists of so many characters, and mine were continually getting out of control, particularly in their behaviour. In fact Paul Hughes, Ian Pillow and Linn Rothstein, who most heroically read through the manuscript for mistakes, said they had never come across an orchestra who behaved quite so badly as my Rutminster Symphony Orchestra. Nor in fact had I. The high jinks and bad behaviour in the book are totally invented and I would stress that Appassionata is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any living person or organization is wholly unintentional and purely coincidental.

I never got to Bogotá, where the first chapters are set, but Annie Senior and Peter Gibbs-Kennet gave me graphic descriptions and I was much indebted to both the Lonely Planet Guide to Colombia and The Fruit Palace, a stunning travel book by Charles Nicholl.