No Man’s Land

Description

I’ve written 70 published books over the years, but they’ve all been non-fiction and only now have I got around to writing my first novel: No Man’s Land.

So it’s taken a while! I’ve actually been working on it for quite some time but often had to leave it on the back burner to pay the bills with another non-fiction book. In the end, I thought, “If I don’t write that novel now, it’ll be published posthumously!” So I finally put the non-fiction on hold while I finished the novel instead.

The idea for it first came to me while I was researching my book The Unknown Soldier, about the missing of the First World War. I discovered a myth, widespread among soldiers on both sides, that somewhere in the middle of No Man’s Land was the entrance to an underground lair, populated by a “ghost army” of deserters and wounded men who had gone out into No Man’s Land and never returned. The reasons for the myth were obvious – the unpalatable alternative was to accept that your friends had been killed or lost without trace – but it set me thinking “What if it was really true?”

That was the starting point for No Man’s Land. It’s a story of love and loss, war and remembrance, and survival when all hope of escape appears lost. It shares some terrain with Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong, and also has one thing – but only one – in common with Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca… and it isn’t a psychotic housekeeper! It’s very different from the humour of my books about my time running Tan Hill, Britain’s highest inn: The Inn at the Top and Pigs Might Fly, but if you like a walk on the dark side, you might enjoy it! I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written, and I can’t wait to find out if readers agree with me.

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