Mottram, The Spanish Farm with a Preface by John Galsworthy, Penguin 1937, p.viii.
28. William Blissett, ‘In Parenthesis among the War Books’, University of Toronto Quarterly, Spring 1973, p.283.
29. Southland Times, 17 October 1936.
30. Southland Times, 3 October 1936.
31. Southland Times, 17 October 1936.
32. Southland Times, 10 October 1936.
33. Southland Times, 17 October 1936; see also note for pp.75–78 on p.222.
34. Letter of 26 December 1936, MS Papers, 196, 173, Turnbull Library.
35. Otago Daily Times, 4 July 1936.
36. Draft of a letter 2 September 1938 with Hyde’s letters to Lee, Auckland Public Library.
37. Winter, p.40.
38. Cited in Winter, pp.47–48.
39. Winter, p.49.
40. N.Z. Observer, 4 June 1936.
41. University of Toronto Quarterly, Spring 1973.
42. Unsigned review, N.Z. Observer, 18 July 1935.
43. N.Z. MSS 412, Auckland Public Library, ff.5, 13.
44. ‘Amelia or: Who Do You Think You Are? Documentary and Identity in Canadian Literature’, Canadian Literature, no. 100, Spring 1984, p.280.
45. N.Z. Radio Record (Wellington), 30 October 1936–25 March 1937 (22 instalments); also in N.Z. Sporting Life, beginning 31 October 1936.
*Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society.
I AM MOST grateful to those who have helped me with this edition. Bill Pearson, who first suggested the project, has sustained me with assistance and support throughout and has provided the bibliography. Derek Challis generously allowed me access to all his mother’s papers to do with Passport to Hell, without which I could hardly have begun. Dr Patrick Sandbrook sent me many useful references arising out of his own research on Robin Hyde. My colleague Terry Sturm assisted with some vital material on Passport to Hell, Sir Keith Sinclair and Trudie McNaughton tracked down some newspaper reports of Starkie’s exploits, and Robin Dudding helped me cut and shape my vast and unwieldy annotations. The librarians at the Alexander Turnbull Library, the New Zealand/Pacific section of the Auckland University Library, and the New Zealand section of the Auckland Public Library could not have been more helpful or considerate.
D.I.B.S.
THIS book is not a work of fiction. I have related its incidents and the circumstances under which they happened, as Starkie told them to me. But after leaving the happy realms of childhood, all names in the book become completely fictitious, with the exception of those belonging to one Field Chaplain, two Generals, and two New Zealand politicians—all, oddly enough, mentioned in a complimentary way. At his own wish I have given the names of Starkie’s family circle correctly, and those of the little group of friends who during the war were leagued together as ‘Tent Eight’. Apart from these, I wish to emphasize the fact that in particular all names of N.C.O.s, military police, wardens, provost marshals, warders, bobbies, and women are as fabulous as those of film stars, and that any possible similarity to the names of living persons is coincidence and coincidence only.
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