EVEN THOUGH it takes place in the present, my new novel, Never, was inspired by events of more than 100 years ago. I originally studied the path to the First World War when I was writing my book Fall Of Giants in the late Noughties and it struck me then that no national leader actually wanted a European conflict.
Yet each of those emperors and leaders and prime ministers took small, quite rational steps that led to the worst war the human race had ever known. That realisation, one I've subsequently often pondered over, led me to ask in my new book: Could it happen again?
