Something like this doesn’t happen without a good deal of help from a lot of other people.

My primary debt is due to my interviewees, who cheerfully provided me with their time, energy, and wisdom. While my own small role in the industry has provided a framework on which to hang events, their memories have been essential to filling that framework in. It’s difficult to repay such a debt, but please let me call them out specifically by name in part recompense: Alex French, Alan Judge, Dennis Jennings, Barry Flanagan, Dr. Niall O’ Reilly, Ronan Mullally, John Lawlor, David Curtin, Margaret Synnott, Michele Neylon, Dermot McNally, Antoin O Lachtnain, Andrew Maybin, Mike Norris, Barry Rhodes, Mark Keane, Mike Nowlan, TJ McIntyre, and others.

I’d also like to thank John Sterne, a man made of sterner stuff than I (pun intended), with whom it was very easy to collaborate and from whom it was easy to learn.

I would also like to especially thank Nick Hilliard who provided much illuminating background to various events, with additional detailed information from the indomitable Eileen Gallagher. Kevin Hargaden, Nina Shiel, and Gillian Glynn O’ Sullivan laboured over the long and difficult transcription work which forms the backbone of this work. Finally, on a personal basis I would like to thank my wife, Léan Ní Chuilleanáin, who helped to provide some time and space to write this (while I was providing the same to her; a two-author household with children, is, I think I can say, a household where no-one is ever unclear on exactly the next thing to do) and Sharon Jackson, who will not believe she made it here as much as much as she did not believe she made it into my last book. I wish also to extend thanks to Timothy Deegan, Deirdre Ni Fhloinn and Ronan Lupton for services rendered, as well as the favicon generator for producing something usable despite my best efforts.

Any other unthanked people who feel they should be thanked, I am sorry; please let me know and I’ll fix it post-haste.