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what I write here. Peter Geyl’s groundbreaking work on Anglo–Dutch relations was also essential. Simon Schama’s bold and imaginative work on the Netherlands – the work with which his now stellar career began, and which for many of us defines the way works of impeccable scholarship can be written so as to reach a wider audience – was my inspiration. Gary Schwartz’s Schwartzlist kept me reminded of how vital and vibrant conversations about all things Anglo–Dutch continue to be (it was he who recommended me to read David Winner’s Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football, to get me in the mood). ‘If I have seen further,’ as Newton wrote, ‘it has been by standing on the shoulders of giants.’

I also owe thanks to two distinguished scholars of things Dutch, both domiciled in London, who were generous enough to share the research from forthcoming books with me while I was writing Going Dutch. Hal Cook let me study the manuscript of his masterful Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine and Science in the Dutch Golden Age. Anne Goldgar gave me a proof copy of her definitive work on seventeenth-century Dutch life and tulips, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age. Both books are now published and available, and I recommend them to those who would like to read at a level of detail beyond that which I can offer here.

In the course of my research for Going Dutch I have made many new friends in the Netherlands. I have a deep and long-standing affection for the people of the Low Countries – my husband took me there when first we met more than twenty-five years ago, because he had spent happy times there in his childhood, and wanted me to share that pleasure. Jean-Pierre Vander Motten and Marika Keblusek were courteously helpful with bibliography and advice, embracing my project even before we had met. At a sequence of conferences, young Dutch scholars took endless trouble to answer my questions, both during the conference sessions and over late-night drinks afterwards.

This book tries resolutely to resist the idea of national character or national stereotypes of any sort. Nevertheless, the inhabitants of the Low Countries are some of the most generous and tolerant people I have ever met. I single out Nadine Akkerman for special thanks. She and I met at a difficult time in both our lives, and we have formed a friendship which will outlast any work I do specifically on Dutch topics. I hope my thanks to her may be allowed to stand for my indebtedness to so many other scholars who have given me the benefit of their far deeper knowledge of things Dutch and Flemish, and who, without exception, have been happy freely to share the findings of their own research with me. Each of them is, of course, acknowledged in my endnotes.

It also matters to me to acknowledge here that the shocking murder of Dutch film-maker and champion of free speech Theo van Gogh in 2004, gunned down as he cycled in Amsterdam, and the subsequent exile to America of his collaborator on the controversial film Submission, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, cast a shadow over the early stages of writing this book. Going Dutch shows that the roots of tolerance run historically deep in the Netherlands, as does the Dutch people’s capacity to accommodate and be culturally enriched by successive waves of exiles and immigrants, and I am confident that in this generation once again they will, in the end, show the rest of Europe the way.

My agents, Gill Coleridge at Rogers, Coleridge and White in London, and Melanie Jackson of the Melanie Jackson Agency in New York, have been as supportive and encouraging as always. I hope I never seem to take them for granted. My editorial team at HarperCollins have been particularly understanding about my need, following serious illness, to tinker with the timetable for the production of Going Dutch. My thanks especially to Arabella Pike and Gail Lynch in London, and Terry Karten in New York. Robert Lacey was a rock as my copy-editor. The indefatigable Mel Haselden has been, as ever, my inspiration and guide in assembling