The historian and author, 58, on his time as a war correspondent, his unusual family history and a hatred of scotch eggs
Being told my books are boring is my greatest fear. If anything, I put excessive violence and sex in them to ensure it’s a charge I’ll never face.
My childhood was eccentric and wonderful. Mum was a novelist, my father a GP and psychiatrist. His surgery was in the basement of our house, where all sorts of dramas – both medical and psychological – played out. It’s from that, I think, that I got my fascination with how people live.
