A recent reference on the Black Death is The Great Mortality by John Kelly (Fourth Estate, 2005). The notion that the Chinese in their great age of exploration in the fifteenth century might have reached Australia and perhaps gone much further is set out in Gavin Menzies’s 1421: The Year China Discovered America (Transworld, 2002).

A solid reference on the life of Columbus, based on the primary sources, is The Worlds of Christopher Columbus by William D. Phillips and Carla Rahn Phillips (Cambridge, 1992). A recent study of the events of the years leading up to 1492 is James Reston’s Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition and the Defeat of the Moors (Doubleday, 2005).

My research for this book took me to Ronda, Granada, Cordoba, Seville and elsewhere in Andalucia, as well as locations closer to home such as Harbottle in Northumberland. As I noted in the first book of this series, there is no substitute for visiting such wonderful places.

Any errors or inaccuracies are my sole responsibility.

Stephen Baxter
Northumberland
February 2007