WWII was, without exaggeration, the biggest event in all of human history, and it is still within living memory.

Yet war doesn't end with armistice, it only ends with forgiveness and reconciliation.

[My maternal grandmother ] was a teacher in London and elsewhere during the war, although the children she taught were not the "lost children" who feature in the novel - those come from my research.

Something I am now convinced of, after researching Everyone Brave, is that none of us is born courageous in all respects.

I like to push characters to extremes so they have to make really tough decisions and there is no life more extreme than that of an athlete.

I wanted to look at the differences between how we fought then and how we fight now, because the current lack of closure generates a state of psychological unease that is interesting to acknowledge and examine.

To be well in your mind you have first to be free.