Colin [Haycraft] didn’t trust my... he knew of my mischievous and... and writing-destroying proclivities, so I was basically locked in the office with pen and paper, and I had to slip the manuscript under the door, page by page, as I wrote it. And by... something occurs to me in relation to that, but I will keep it for the moment. Anyhow by December the book was written. The last page had been given to Colin, and it was time to go back to New York, and I... I took a taxi to the airport feeling that the book was done. But then, in the taxi – and I snapped my fingers when I thought of it – I realised that something absolutely crucial had been missed out. Something, without which, the entire structure would collapse. And so I hastily wrote that, and this was the beginning of a period of feverish, feverish footnote writing, which continued for two months. This was long before the era of Xerox but I would send my footnotes express mail to Colin.

And then he said to me, in February 1973, I had sent him more than 400 footnotes. He said 'They are all fascinating,' he said, 'but in aggregate they come to three times the length of the book, and they will sink it'. He said, 'You can have a dozen', and I said, 'Okay, you choose them'. He said, 'No, you choose them, because otherwise you’ll be angry with me for my choice'. And so the original Migraine [sic] had a dozen footnotes. When it... when it came out, the original Migraine had a dozen footnotes.

[Q] The original...

Sorry?

[Q] The original Awakenings?

Oh I’m sorry, yes. So the original Awakenings had a dozen footnotes. When the American hardback came out I snuck in another dozen footnotes. But when the paperback came out, which Penguin published in '75, I... I who had been so submissive and surrendering became slightly aggressive, and... and I think Julia Vellacott, my then editor, was steamrollered a bit and I had about 100 footnotes or whatever in the book.