ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Author wishes to thank:
Neville Fletcher, Umpires Secretary of the Central Lancashire Cricket League.
The Rochdale Observer.
The team at Troubador.
Dad for his Turner Brothers’ recollections.
The cool delights of Hollingworth Lake.
The street sellers of Kurdistan.
The stoic and patient people of Sadr City.
The lost memories of Redbrook Middle School.
The roaming fields of Lenny Barn and the tireless campaigners of Save Spodden Valley.
Less thanks to Tony Blair, Saddam Hussein and George Bush Jr – but this novel wouldn’t have been possible without them.
Finally, a special thanks to all the families, deceased victims and current sufferers of the Turner Brothers menace, particularly in the town of my birth, Rochdale.
RESEARCH MATERIAL (selected)
Magic Mineral to Killer Dust by Geoffrey Tweedale, Oxford University Press
Empire by Dennis Judd, Fontana Press
Dispatches: Iraq – The Reckoning, Peter Oborne, Channel 4
Sing As We Go, Her Autobiography, Gracie Fields, Frederick Muller Ltd
Three Kings, directed by David O Russell
Dickie Bird, My Autobiography, Hodder & Stoughton
Strangeways, ITV documentary, first broadcast 2011
A Fistful of Dust Page 26
