Hi everyone, welcome to Dance Noise History. I've got one of the greatest contemporary authors of historical fiction on the podcast. They Sebastian Forks, he's famous for his books about the First War and it's Aftermath, he is famous for doing meticulous research for vividly recreating the set on which he places his actors, his fictional characters.

We all read Birdsong, we're a Charlotte Gray, we're all the girl at the line door. He is described as one of those rare novelists as being literary and popular at the same time. He's presented TV shows, he's on radio all the time.

Bit of a legend, and it was great to have him on the show.

He's just finished another novel about the Aftermath, the first one, the trauma that people live with following it, called Snow Country.

So I saw that, thought it's a homage to me, so he's coming on the pub, no question, so it's great to have him on. I discovered my great sadness and I played absolutely no part whatsoever in the titleing or the contents of his new book, but still, I'm going to have to be a chat.

If you want to watch the vast amount of programs, documentaries, listen to the podcast that we have about the First World War, you can do so at History Hit TV, it's like Netflix for History, we've got a subscription service, very, very small amount of money every month.

You get the world's best History Channel, no aliens on there, no bonkers conspiracy theories, just history about things that have happened from the Stone Age to the nuclear age around the world.

You can access anywhere in the world, and we do our best to make sure we have a lot of global history on there at the moment.

A lot of First World War content, both around the Western Front, but other theatres as well, including the millions of troops from the British Empire that fought alongside Warring inside the British Army.

In the First World War. Please go and check out History Hit.tv for all that wonderful stuff. But in the meantime, here is Sebastian Fuchs, enjoying.

Sebastian, thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

It's a pleasure.

Well, I was honoured when I saw the title of your new book. I'm sure you had me in mind when you were...

To homage, it's a rather long homage, but you know, I'm sure you'll love it.

The more I read and studied about the First World War, the more interests I become actually in the aftermath.

We have the poetry, we have the sources, we have the films, the novels about the war.

But it doesn't feel like we do as much for that generation who then stepped out back into civilian life.

I think that's probably true, or maybe I haven't read as much as I might have done.

Certainly, the subject of the rebuilding of Europe after the First World War, it doesn't seem to me to have been as touched on or to be so current in people's minds.

I mean, there's just been a book out about Germany after the Second, which has received a lot of attention.

But the rebuilding of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or rather rebuilding a society in the wake of the dissolution of the Empire,

how people managed in Germany and Austria in 1920 say, it is pretty interesting, and it went through many phases, I think, of dissolution and despair.

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