I always found the extraordinary loss of life in the First World War very moving. I remember learning about it as a very young child as an eight- or nine-year-old asking my teachers what poppies were for. Every year the teachers would suddenly wear these red paper flowers in their lapels and I would say 'What does that mean?'
I have been blessed in many ways and one of those is to have been born in Africa for me a great treasure house of stories. I have been researching it since my infancy reading about it talking to men and women who have spent their lives in this land living it as I have and loving it as I do. I write almost entirely from my own experience.