I write in the novel's afterword that our recent wars "finish not with victory or defeat but with a calendar draw-down date and a presumption that we shall never be reconciled with the enemy".

Things that we have to really dare ourselves to do come quite naturally to others.

We leave it up to books and movies to talk about WWII on our behalf.

I think all of us are intrigued to imagine what we as individuals would become, if we were ever tested as hard as that golden generation was.

My maternal grandmother was in London during the Blitz. Indeed, the man she was dating before she met my grandfather was killed beside her in a cinema, in 1941, when a bomb came through the roof - a tragedy in which she herself was badly wounded.

I was carrying two cargoes. Yes, one of them was horror, but the other one was hope.

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