ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Lacking education and suffering from occasional bouts of impaired judgement, as I do, it must be clear to anyone with half a brain that I cannot possibly have written this book without a lot of help. I owe a very great debt of gratitude to many people. Some of them appear in this book. Some that do and some that don’t will in the fullness of time appear it this list. It is a work in progress and it will grow.

I want to thank my mother and father Elspeth and Joe Tibbetts, who took me with them when they ran away. They showed me the world. By the time I was sixteen, in their company, I had dinned with Stavros Niarchos, drunk Tsampa tea with the Dalai Lama, fallen asleep with U-Thant the Director General of the United Nations and vomited on the expensively shod feet of the Maharaja of Mysore.

They took me to India, Pakistan, Kashmir, Scotland, Italy, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Greece, South Africa and the Isle of Man. They infected me with a wanderlust that, thankfully, I have never been cured off. They neglected my education, starved me of the company of other children and allowed me far to much independence when I was far too young. They were neglectful parents, they fucked me up utterly, they - of course - were fucked up in their turn. I had a wonderful childhood, it had a disastrous effect upon my adulthood but it was wonderful nevertheless. For all these things I can never thank them enough. They seeded my oyster not with a scruple of grit but with a shovel-full of hardcore.

My partner Vicky Sargent and our children, Poppy Tibbetts and Robert Tibbetts, have had to put up with the strange and difficult person my parents worked so hard to produce. I am proud of them and reminded everyday how lucky I am that they turned up when they did and stuck with me.

To my family I must add two enduring friends. The first is Aurelia Pinchbeck essayist, critic, mentor and advisor, first my lover then my friend and editor of more than fifty years. Life would have been impossible without her. The second is Pete Willis graphic designer and fully paid up member of the human race who has suffered my friendship for more than twenty years and not always without complaint. He has been a true friend and has loaned me his moral compass on the frequent occasions when my own was lost or malfunctioning,

To these I must add:

The late Leslie Forbes, writer, broadcaster and artist who bought me lunch and explained that in the writing of books it is necessary to finish at least one in order to get paid

The legendary Christine Walker travel editor at the Sunday Times who paid for the drinks, allowed me to learn on the job and never failed to pay me even when I gave her eighteen-hundred words on South India when she thought she was getting eight-hundred to a thousand on the Isle of Man

James Howarth, Librarian and Fellow, St Edmund’s Hall, Oxford.

Dan Walker, artist, lawyer and Indian Running Duck wrangler who opened up his life for me to film and read some of my early attempts at this book and was encouraging in his judgements.

Edward G Seidensticker who introduced me to Japan through his translations of Mishima and Kawabata and to the seedier side of Tokyo ~ when I was an innocent abroad ~ and so provided me with a measuring stick against which to measure all the other seediness and misbehaviour I haved encountered in my life.

Still to come: Coll McHarrie, Sally Gardner, Valerie Coffin Price, N Ram. TS “Tiger” Subramaniam, TN Seshan, Subramanian Swamy, Yvonne and Les Boardman and their son Jonathan Boardman,  Trevor Lyons and ….