My whole life is my work.

[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.

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

Death, of course, is a refuge. It's where you go when a new name, or a mask and cape, can no longer hide you from yourself. It's where you run to when none of the principalities of your conscience will grant you asylum.

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.

There's what people say, and there's what people mean, and I like to explore the difference between the two.

I'm always determined that as a novelist I'm going to go out there and research my characters very thoroughly before I start writing.