CUP OF TEA

What inspired you to write a novel set in World War II?

I really made this decision before even writing my first novel Gallipoli Street which is set during World War I. It was an early goal of mine to write a trilogy of war stories in order to encapsulate three generations living through three consecutive wars. How each reacted to conflict and grief, how each became affected, what helped them to survive, what passions and beliefs drove them on.

World War II resonates very closely with me as an era as these were the youthful days of my aunts, uncles and parents, who I think of as ‘the golden generation’. I grew up on these firsthand stories. Losing them all, one by