Being there

I write a lot about war. This isn't through morbid fascination - at least I hope it isn't - but rather through my inability to imagine how I'd react in unthinkable circumstances. Would I be heroic? I very much doubt it, yet people as ordinary as I am committed acts of extraordinary heroism and repellant brutality. I try hard not to judge or condemn. They're all just people.

In the main, it's these ordinary people that inhabit my stories. I learn as much about them as I write as you do when you read, and slowly I see a picture, however imperfect, of what it was like to be there.