After seeing this, I became fascinated by dragons. One of my very earliest forays into fiction, at the age of eight, was a story about the Wormingford Dragon.

That said, the rest of The Secrets of the Lake – all of the plot and all of the characters, as well as the layout of the village and the vicarage – are entirely my own invention. The stained glass was installed in 1950, through the generosity of a local woman in gratitude for the safe return of those who came back from the Second World War. It is a charming design.

My thanks to the people of Wormingford and the present church community there, for the inspiration your window gave to a young aspiring author all those years ago. And to the landowner who in the year 2000, as a millennium project, was inspired to cut out a huge dragon into the hillside just a few miles away. I visit as often as I can, delighted to see the legend still being celebrated in this way.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Massive thanks to my lovely editor Caroline Hogg and all the team at Pan Macmillan, as well as my brilliant agent Caroline Hardman of Hardman & Swainson, for their clear-eyed advice and support in helping The Secrets of the Lake make its way into the world.

As ever my family, David, Becky and Polly Trenow, have been amazingly supportive, as have other relatives and wonderful friends, without whom life would be infinitely less fun.

Praise for Liz Trenow

‘Liz Trenow sews together the strands of past and present as delicately as the exquisite stitching on the quilt which forms the centrepiece of the story’

LUCINDA RILEY

‘Extraordinary, fascinating . . . deeply rooted in history’

MIDWEEK, BBC RADIO 4

‘What a delicious read The Silk Weaver is. I was enchanted by this novel set in eighteenth-century Spitalfields; meticulously researched, richly detailed, the brilliantly structured story shimmered as the threads of silk wound through its pages. I devoured it in two days and was gripped from start to finish. The characters shine too and Anna is an absolute triumph. A fabulous book’

DINAH JEFFERIES

‘Liz Trenow draws us in so that we inhabit her world, and it was a wrench to put the book down after the last beautifully written page’

GILL PAUL

‘Totally fascinating . . . a book to savour’

KATE FURNIVALL

‘Push back the gorgeous brocade curtains of The Silk Weaver’s period detail and romance and you find a window on eighteenth-century London that, with its prejudice and divisions, is surprisingly pertinent today’

KATE RIORDAN

‘I absolutely loved The Silk Weaver. Liz writes beautifully, and I adored the characters of Anna and Henri – their love was so delicately and believably evoked. The background motifs of the silks and the floral designs, and the political/social context which made their relationship so difficult, are also brilliantly done. I really couldn’t wait to get back to it each evening’

TRACY REES

‘An assured debut with a page-turning conclusion’

Daily Express