And Finally...

This book has involved many long hours of work, and the feedback from readers of the previous editions has been a great encouragement to keep going. But as I look out on an English garden where the daffodils and cherry blossom of spring are competing with the last hail showers of winter, I find a particular poignancy in Rupert Brooke's poem, used so often throughout the book as an example text:

My heart all Winter lay so numb,
The earth so dead and frore,
That I never thought the Spring would come again
Or my heart wake any more .

But Winter's broken and earth has woken,
And the small birds cry again;
And the hawthorn hedge puts forth its buds,
And my heart puts forth its pain .

I hope you will find my efforts worthwhile.