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By Root 5680 0

what was originally a single concluding chapter had developed into the whole of Part Two, deciphering the basic symbolic language from which stories are constructed; and I was now aware that a further huge section of the book would be required to deal with the immense change which has come over storytelling in the past 200 years. Fortunately it was at this time that, again with profound gratitude, I could at last transfer the book onto a computer screen. Until now, to allow for endless modification of the text, every page had had to be typed not once but in many cases scores of times. Now, like many authors, I was liberated by the electronic revolution in a way which made one wonder how we all managed to write books before.

By the end of the 1990s I could at last begin to see how the book should develop towards its conclusion with Part Four. I was now halfway into Part Three, dealing with the changes in storytelling in the past two centuries, when I ran into a mental block in having to cope with writing about Proust (whose Remembrance of Times Past was at the time being hailed on all sides as `the greatest novel of the twentieth century'). Once surmounted, this proved to be the final logjam. The remainder of Part Three emerged with gratifying speed, including the exhilaration of writing the chapter on Oedipus and Hamlet, which incorporated material first drafted for that school lecture 30 years earlier.

By now, as I approached the final chapters, relating our capacity to imagine stories to the `real world, I was relieved to realise that it would really have been difficult to complete a book dealing so intimately with the patterns of human psychology at any earlier stage in my life. For years I had been frustrated by how long it all seemed to take (another author might have got there much sooner). But I had needed those years of experience of the world to puzzle out some of the deeper riddles presented by storytelling, in a way which earlier would not have been possible. By the time I came to its concluding chapters this project had taken half my time on earth, which might to anyone seem excessive. But at least, with all its imperfections, the project was now complete.

Inevitably through all those years countless people have made comments or suggestions which, often without their knowing it, have proved invaluable in helping to shape a thought or to provide an example or quotation which appears in the final text. I cannot do justice to them all, but in particular I would like to thank the following:

Richard Ingrams (for drawing my attention to the quotation from Boswell's life of Dr Johnson which stands at the beginning of the book); Sara Meyer (for giving me The Golden Ass); Tony and Jill Jay; Barry Fantoni; Andrew Osmond; Christine Stone (for widening my horizons); Bennie Gray; Mary Booker; Arianna Stassinopoulos; Professor Robert Donington; Dr Anthony Stevens; Christopher Hogwood (for drawing my attention to the shortcomings of Amadeus); Robert McCrum; Richard Cohen; Anne Baring; Hella Adler; my sons Nicholas and Alexander Booker (for all they taught me without realising it); Robert Temple; Esther Eidinow (for her paper on the origins of hubris); Sir Laurens van der Post; Patricia Ashby; Sir Laurence Whistler; Charlie Paton (for giving me The Voices of Marrakesh); Ian Hislop; Richard North (not least for The Terminator); Helen Szamuely; Anna Duda; Ed Howker (who was first to read the final draft); John Gibbens; and finally my patient, if battered, publisher Robin Baird-Smith.

Among too many other duties neglected during the years of my preoccupation with the book were those I owed to my godchildren. Very belatedly I now offer it to them as containing something of what I should have passed on to them in other ways: Tom Winnifrith, Sam Eidinow, Toby Baring, Sam Holden, David Jay, Honor Baldry, Eleanor Percival, Storm Boyle and Tom Bishop.

My final debt is to Valerie, for allowing me to sit for years in the peace of my study, happily lost in a struggle I still cannot quite believe is over.

Litton, 6 March 2004