Acton, acton, welcome to We Have Ways 12 Days of Christmas guest where we're talking to a famous face about their personal relationship with the Second World War.

And of course today, Happy New Year! It's the 1st of January 2023, can you believe it?

Anyway, on today's episode, Alan I caught up with the brilliant Sebastian folks about his very personal interest in the Second World War and how it has inspired some of his amazing novels.

Acton, acton, welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk, our Christmas editions and who are we talking to Jim?

Well, he's an old friend of mine and one of my absolute favourite novelists and the favourite novelist of many, many, many millions as well.

It's Sebastian folks, he's also a sometimes batting partner of mine. Sebastian and I will be forever bonded by a very special day in Colombo in Sri Lanka where we almost got to a hundred opening run partnership against some pretty tidy bowling.

It has to be said on a test match ground. We didn't quite get the three figures but we almost did and it was a very memorable day, not least because it was also the day that David Bowie died, which is why I kind of still remember it.

But another reason why I remember it. But we're not here to talk about cricket. We're obviously here to talk about the Second World War but also Sebastian's books and of your many novels, Sebastian, you've written about the Second World War and a number of them, Charlotte Grey obviously, possible life.

And I've got to say one of my absolute favourites of yours, where my heart used to be, which was just a stunning book. Also partly set at Anziere, which I'm writing about the moment so it's kind of much on my mind.

Well, good morning, gentlemen. It's very nice to be here. And yeah, I have written a little bit about the war. I'm not an expert on it. I'm not a historian like you guys. But it's just something that was in the background of my life when I was growing up, I suppose.

And my father had been an infantry man with the Duke of Wellington's regiment. I've had the fathers of most of the kids I knew growing up and our mothers as well. My mother was in the war.

So it was just something that was there. It wasn't extraordinary. But when you were a child, of course, you know, all you're interested in is what's for tea and can I go and play football now and so on.

And it wasn't until I was older and I suppose around about the age of 16 and I began to read books and think about life and history and who we were and what's going on.

That I realised the world we lived in was not quite as lovely and cozy and safe as mum and dad made out. In fact, we were on the edge of a third world war. I remember very well the Cuban Missile Crisis and the long faces of the teachers at school.

And I think at that point I decided to sort of try to understand how we got ourselves into this position. And of course, like most little curious little boys I asked dad and like most fathers, he was very reluctant to talk about it.

Not because he'd been over traumatised, but because that was then and they wanted to put all that behind them and have a nice life now and live in peace and grow nice vegetables in the garden and play cricket at weekends and so on.

I suppose it was as a teenager that the sort of curiosity about the sort of bizarre nature of our life and our parents lives first hit me.

But I think also you the other thing I think about that generation when their children are asking them about that they don't want their children to think of them as soldiers and ultimately people who have been trained to kill other people.

I mean this is sort of grotesque isn't it? And I would imagine that most people just don't, you know, your father probably didn't want you to think of him in those terms.

I think that's right. I think I remember asking at lunch one day, did you actually kill any Germans dad?

What did he do? Clip you around the ear. And he said, well, he didn't want to talk about it. Maybe I mean I probably threw a grenade which who knows it might have blah blah blah.

But I do know that after the first serious action he saw in Tunisia a very very unpleasant battle which took place over a course of about 10 or 12 hours after which he was awarded an MC.

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