In just about every book published by a commercial trade publisher, you will find the following items in addition to the contents themselves: the title pages (authors sign here), an obverse copyright page, a dedication page, an acknowledgements section of people the author would like to thank, and, if non-fiction, and endnotes and bibliography section.
In this blog post, I’m going to focus on the acknowledgements section, why they’re important, and how they’re responsible for serious books. Of the many authors I’ve read, nobody has perfected the art of the acknowledgements section like Lord Andrew Roberts, Baron of Belgravia.
Who Is Andrew Roberts?
For those unfamiliar, Andrew Roberts is a historian, journalist and, since November 2022, a Life Peer in the House of Lords. He has been publishing major works of history for more than 30 years to critical acclaim. His most significant works include an epic biography of Napoleon Bonaparte, a 1000 page single-volume biography of Winston Churchill that somehow contained new information despite it being the 1010th biography of the man (yes really), and a book on modern warfare co-authored with America’s leading military man, General David Petreaus.
That little summary surely does not do justice to Andrew Roberts’s many achievements, but for all the prizes and acclaim he’s earned, I know for a fact that he’s never been given an award for something far more remarkable.
And The Winner of Best Acknowledgements Section Goes To…
Andrew Roberts’s books always begin with his acknowledgements section. And it’s a good thing too, because they’re always more interesting than the fascinating subject matter he’s so laboriously worked on. To demonstrate, allow me to quote, verbatim, sections of the 10(!) pages stapled atop his acclaimed Napoleon biography.
“Having now spent longer researching and writing this book than Napoleon himself spent on St Helena and Elba put together, I’ve collected a disconcertingly large array of people for whom I would like to thank for their unfailing generosity, good nature, time and help. They include President Nicolas Sarkozy for his insights into the state of thinking about Napoleon in France today; David Cameron and Rodney Melville for allowing me to research the Napoleon correspondence at Chequers…”
WHOA, WHOA, TIME OUT! Most acknowledgement sections last half a page and barely go beyond the author’s parents and their copyeditor. Mr Roberts, on the other hand, starts by thanking the President of France and the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, both of whom were serving in office when this book was being written. I don’t know about you, but if I were writing a book about Napoleon, having access to the President of France would make my job significantly easier. Ditto for the Prime Minister of Napoleon’s greatest foe, Britain.
Other names might not mean anything to the typical person, but add significant weight to the book. Take this example: “Mervyn King for his thoughts on French and British debt-financing of the Napoleonic Wars…”
You might be justified in thinking “who the hell is Mervyn King?”. Well that’s Lord Mervyn King to you, Baron King of Lothbury. Lord King is only the School Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. So yeah, I think he knows a thing or two about the economic data Andrew Roberts needed. But of course, there are hundreds of economics professors, what else is special about Mervyn King? Well, he served ten years as the Governor of The Bank of England. So if you’re looking for someone who knows the ins-and-outs of overseeing the finances of an entire country, Lord King is your guy. So his comments on “French and British debt-financing” almost certainly are second to none.
Other names who popped up in Andrew’s list of names for providing general thoughts and insight include this nobody: "Dr. Henry Kissinger for his thoughts on the Congress of Vienna…” Love or hate the late Dr. Kissinger, to deny he was an influential person in American foreign policy would be completely absurd. And yeah, I bet his thoughts on the Congress of Vienna were extremely interesting.
Still other names coming and going throughout this mini-treatise include “Caroline Dalmeny for lending me a lock of Napoleon’s hair, which has sat on my desk throughout, inspiring me…” As an avid collector of things, I can say I’ve never had something as weird or as interesting as a lock of Napoleon’s hair. Then of course, there’s this little ditty: “I would also like to apologise profoundly to Jérôme Tréca and the staff of Fontainebleau Palace for setting off the burglar alarms in Napoleon’s throne room no fewer than three times.“
At this point in the acknowledgments (I’m on page 2 of 10), you might think Lord Roberts is just showing off. However, just beneath his confession to (unintentional) attempted burglary is a revealing comment that shows how and why Lord Roberts earned all the prizes he’s won.
“A military historian who doesn’t visit battlefields is akin to a detective who doesn’t bother to visit the scene of the crime. In the course of researching this book I have visited fifty-three of Napoleon’s sixty battlefields, most of them in the company of distinguished military historian John Lee…In the sixty-nine archives, libraries, museums and research institutes that I’ve visited in fifteen countries during the course of my researches, I’ve met with nothing but helpfulness and friendliness and I would in particular like to thank:”
What follows is a list of a list of person and places that assisted Lord Roberts on his journey to write the sprawling epic biography of Europe’s most distinguished statesman. He breaks it down by country, all fifteen of them.
Interesting Trivia, But So What?
Andrew Robert’s acknowledgements section is a case-study of what I talked about in the last post vis-a-vis writing what you know. In order to have sufficient knowledge to produce competent material, these are the lengths an author must go to in order to fully grasp their subject. All of your senses as a writer must be engaged. Sight, sound, and smell can’t be replicated in a library or by being, oh lord, stuck in Lodi again.
But a further observation about Andrew Roberts’s acknowledgements section is the importance of having people who will say yes to you. The list of people mentioned spans into the hundreds. If any one of them declined Andrew’s request for help, it would have been to the book’s severe detriment. Had Andrew Roberts been unable to speak with those people or visited those places, the book would have been laughable if it could have been written at all.
Though few subjects are as huge as Napoleon Bonaparte, I believe Lord Roberts is the gold standard for what an author must to prepare their material, even if their book is children’s fiction. How do I mean? For example, if you’re setting a book in Italy, you need to go there and marinate in the culture for a while even if all that comes out of it is a 160 page middle-grade novel set in Italy. Your author voice would have little to no credibility without it. For writers who are creating their own fictional world, they might not be able to book a visit to their fantasy land, but they can do the next best thing by visiting hundreds of other authors’ fantasy worlds first.
Conclusion
Lord Andrew Roberts’s sprawling acknowledgment sections are a) a work of art and b) a firm rejection of the idea of “solitary genius”. Just because one person’s name appears on the book cover does not mean one person is wholly responsible for the book. Keith Richards once said that songs written by two people are better than songs written by one person. Every book is like that.
The more people who helped the author, the better the book will almost certainly be.