Almodis (35 page)

The Song of the Hart on p. 97 is an adaptation of a verse from George Turbevile’s 1576
Noble Art of Venerie or Hunting
. Dia’s song on p. 288 is an extract from a poem by Bertran de Born, translated in Goldin (1973, p. 241). All other poems quoted in the text are by the female troubadours translated by Meg Bogin in Bogin, Meg,
The Female Troubadours
(New York/London: W.W. Norton and Co., 1980) reproduced by kind permission of Meg Bogin as follows:

I am grateful to my self-styled muse, Bob Smillie, and to my daughter Lola, my dad, my mum, my writing and reading nephew Jack, the rest of my lovely family, my other fabulous friends and my cat for their various invaluable support. Thank you to Rob La Frenais and Zoe Benbow for loaning me their house near
Ambialet, to Hester Schofield for driving me there and being a writing inspiration, to Andrew and Bodil Humphries for their ‘writing shack’ in Pembrokeshire, to Alan Smith and Helen Ratcliffe for getting me down a deep mine. In Ambialet and La Condomine I am grateful to Bernadette Goy, Jacques and Keltoum Fabas, Nadine Lefloch, and Régis and Françoise Mas for their warmth that sustained me through a frigid winter in the Tarn Valley and inspired me to try to write about those lovely valleys, mountains and people.

I am grateful to the staff on the MA in Creative Writing at
University
of Wales Trinity Saint David in Carmarthen who set me off on this endeavour and especially Menna Elfyn, Helen Carey, Paul Wright and Robert Nesbit. All my fellow Creative Writing students and especially Amanda Miles, Anthony Jones, Karen Carmichael-Timson, Caroline James, and Helene Ifanca James, were important inspirations and critics.

I am grateful to the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse for
supplying
me with an eleventh-century map of the city. I would like to thank Abbey Santander for a Scholarship to pursue my research in Spain and Maria-Josep Balsach at University of Girona and Imma Prieto and Denys Blacker in Girona for their support. I am grateful to Esther Ferrar for an illuminating conversation in Girona about being an identical twin. I would also like to thank Oxford Brookes University.

Finally, I am immensely grateful to all the staff and sales
representatives
at Impress Books for their enthusiasm about the book and for their careful editorial, design and marketing work.