Fiona: ‘I first came across Harry Head in Gordon Ogilvie’s encyclopaedic Banks Peninsula: Cradle of Canterbury (GP Books, 1990). He caught my eye, as he caught Steve’s eye: wild-eyed, eccentric, an amateur aviator? Irresistible! I spun him into a novel. But for the facts of his life, I have had to wait till now, and Steve’s meticulous biography.’

Steve: ‘Fiona and I have known each other for quite a while, and at times we have shared a fascination with the enigmatic Harry Head. In her book The Hopeful Traveller, Fiona puts him in a railway carriage going to London to see the Great Exhibition in 1851. This was the starting place for all his journeys.’

 

​