When I was younger I used to get my best writing done at night, but now it has to be during the day. I usually finish work at half past seven, then go back to the house to open a bottle of wine, have dinner, and then read or watch television.

The blurring of fact and fiction has great commercial potential, which is bound to be corrupting in historical terms.

If you smash a city when you're trying to capture it, you actually end up providing the perfect terrain for the defenders while blocking the access for your own armoured vehicles.

The British bombing of Caen beginning on D-Day in particular was stupid, counter-productive and above all very close to a war crime.

It takes me three or four years to research and write each book and the individual stories stay with you for a long time afterwards.

The vital thing for me is to integrate the history from above with the history from below because only in that way can you show the true consequences of the decisions of Hitler or Stalin or whomever on the ordinary civilians caught up in the battle.

When I was younger I used to get my best writing done at night, but now it has to be during the day. I usually finish work at half past seven, then go back to the house to open a bottle of wine, have dinner, and then read or watch television.