From the first pages of Tunesmith, tinsmith, Pilgrim and Feeding the Vultures we form a picture of Jacques' hermit-like existence on the river-border of Scotland and England, miles from the nearest town, out of contact with the rest of the world in both time and space.

This was not always so, for we also learn that in his teens Jacques had a meteoric rise to success and fame, that he had a winning way with the ladies. A glimpse of this is there before his narrative even starts, in the letter from Helga.

'Jacques has met Helga in one of my own favourite spots in Edinburgh, the street-market in Stockbridge. It is one of those magical little corners which I discovered when I used to go into the city by bus on a Sunday, a refreshing contrast to the isolation of the Scottish Borders farm three hours away, where I can easily go for days without meeting another human being.'

'During the pandemic I literally went entire weeks at a time with no direct human contact whatever. That 'forced' isolation proved to be very productive, because for me it went on for so long, living alone and needing so little beyond my work and the quiet countryside around this farm. The experience put everything else into perspective, especially that which we normally take for granted...sharing our home and our life with someone else. 

'That pandemic-perspective enabled me to write about Jacques' meetings with Helga and Hetty with such clarity and confidence, showing the different ways in which they transform his life.'

When Jacques' goes back to Helga's room in one of the beautiful little cul de sacs which back onto the Water of Leith, John Lennon's song 'Norwegian Wood' gives a musical context to the beginning of their love-affair. In a few pages and one song-reference, the whole of a marriage is summed up, leaving us with a big question-mark over its product...two children who have no interest in their father, nor he in them.

'The money-driven family life which I portrayed in those pages is starkly different to my own childhood. We did pretty well everything as a family, and some of the happiest times for me were eating a hot pasty with my father in the shops where he worked, right in the centre of a friendly little town and a busy city, or far from anyone on a misty autumn morning in the Cambridgeshire Fens, watching kestrels and stalking hares while my mother was picking potatoes.

'With those childhood experiences in my heart and in my bones, it should be no surprise that I love the contrast of real isolation with being right in the centre of things.'

'One of my favourite places in Scotland is the top of Authur's Seat, overlooking Edinburgh, gazing for a moment at the coast of Fife and the Firth of Forth, then feeling as if I could reach out and touch each one those buildings which hold so much history and so many human stories.

'In my imagination I can wander away to the quietness of the hills in the background...sometimes thinking of S.R. Crockett's Cleg Kelly, the Arab of the City set in that very area. It's a bit like Wilkie Collins' nineteenth century view of London from Hampstead Heath in The Woman in White...but even better.

'On Arthur's Seat we can be very firmly-rooted not only geographically, but also in time...and culturally.'

'To be surrounded by young people from all over Europe and many other parts of the world, sitting on a volcanic rock which has been rubbed smooth by the passage of countless other human bodies and lives...it is impossible to remain disconnected from the past, present and future of humanity in a place like that.

'When I pass a young man or woman who is running up one of those quiet, hidden paths below Arthur's Seat, or along the Salisbury Crags, I feel a kindred spirit and sometimes, even in my late sixties, I might run a bit of the way, too.'

'Arthur's Seat gives an extraordinary perspective, and its influence on all three books is immense. When I sit there for half an hour or so, I sense a rare communion of human souls...men, women and children who speak so many different languages, who have such different home-lives, coming together as if by chance and discovering that they can share something very special.

'And while fellow human animals talk amongst themselves, in my own silence I might see a passing fulmar which has come miles from its North Sea feeding-grounds to nest on a hidden city crag, or a peregrine which drops out of the sky to snatch a pigeon from right under our noses.'