What gave you the idea to write a book together?
We have always
wanted to write a book together especially since we have worked as a team on
Peter's other books. When our editor ask Peter for another book about military
history we came up with the idea of the two of us writing personal stories about
people who had extraordinary experiences in wartime.
What
method did you adopt - did you write the stories together or separately?
We did a great deal
of research and came up with a long list of potential subjects. Each of us
chose the men or women we found most interesting and when we had each written
our account, we handed it over to the other for suggestions and corrections. It
worked very well although there was the odd argument - usually friendly!
There are
already many published war stories - what is different about these accounts?
What makes these
stories different is that each one is uniquely memorable. Most importantly
we chose individuals who had written first hand accounts of their experiences
in diaries or letters from the battlefield. A few of our subjects - for example
a refugee from war-torn Syria, a veteran of the ST Nazaire harbour raid
in 1942 and an SAS navigator in the North African desert - are still
alive so we interviewed them personally.
What do
you find fascinating about people caught up in war?
We are both
journalists who have covered many conflicts but we have never fought a war. Telling
the story about people who have had that life changing experience has been
enormously rewarding. We haven't just gone for heroes, there are villains in
our book too? And one of the most astonishing stories is the tale of the
captured German Luftwaffe pilot who made several escapes from British POW camps
and finally made it home to lGermany
The
stories span four centuries - how did you select the subjects, and research
their stories?
We hope that readers
will find each of the stories unforgettable. We include brave soldiers like
Edward Seager who survived the charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimea. And
we've gone behind the battle lines as well. We write about doctors like
Norman Bethune who invented mobile blood transfusions in the Spanish Civil War.
Women play a large part too: spies like the incredibly brave and beautiful
Krystyna Skarbek, Winston Churchill's favourite operative in the Second World
War and Belgian/ Congolese nurse Augusta Chiwy who risked her life to save
American soldiers in the Battle of the Bulge.
Are you
planning to write together again?
We are so pleased
with our book that we are already collecting stories for War Stories Two. Any
suggestions greatly welcome!
