The story I’ve just sent to the publisher is at least partially set in Cornwall, so I needed to do some research to make sure I did justice to the county. Tin has been mined in Cornwall for four thousand years, right to the end of the twentieth century. Other metals, too. By the mid-nineteenth century, overseas competition made the Cornish mines less profitable, and so many miners and their families emigrated that the Cornish have a saying. “A mine is a hole in the ground with a Cornishman at the bottom”.

In my research I discovered that Cornish (Kernewek) is one of those languages that has been brought back from extinction in the past fifty years. It is still classified as critically endangered. In the sixteenth century, many people in Cornwall spoke only Kernewek, and objected strongly to the English Book of Common Prayer becoming the sole legal form of worship in England.

The so-called Prayer Book Rebellion was harshly put down. The language declined in the next two centuries, for several reasons, but at least in part because the local gentry adopted English so that they would not be considered disloyal and rebellious.

By the end of the eighteenth century, very few people (and perhaps no young people) spoke Kernewek.

Names are a different matter. Both first names and surnames are passed down through the generations. My hero and heroine have Cornish first names, as do several of the other Cornish characters.

As to the bogs and mires that play an important part in the story, Bodmin Moor has numerous peat deposits, as well as spectacular granite outcrops. Blanket bogs are peatlands that cover crests, slopes, flats, and hollows of a gently undulating terrain. Valley mires are areas of water-logged deep peat in valley bottoms or channels.

Good advice to walkers is to test the depth of any wet or shaky ground before you step on it.

I hope readers who live in Cornwall will enjoy what they recognise and forgive any errors.