Blog
The books behind the blog
Four novels and a history, each set among the real events of the Second World War.
Collaboration in the Second World War
- History World War Two
- February 7, 2026
- 3 mins
How occupied nations balanced survival, ideology, and betrayal--and how post-war reckoning reshaped Europe's memory of collaboration.
Read the novel: The Blue Pencil
Two Families at War
- History World War Two
- January 9, 2026
- 3 mins
The story behind my Blitz crime novel, from German Jewish refugees to a North London crime family, and the research that shaped the book.
Read the novel: Two Families at War
Cliveden and the Seeds of Appeasement
- History World War Two
- November 27, 2025
- 7 mins
How a grand Thames-side country house helped shape Britain’s policy of appeasement in the 1930s — and how those events echo through my fiction.
Read the novel: The Blue Pencil
The Cinema and Propaganda in the Second World War
- History World War Two Film
- October 20, 2025
- 4 mins
How Britain, the USA, and Nazi Germany used popular cinema to shape opinion and morale before and during WWII, with case studies from 1942–1943.
By the author of Ordinary Heroes