Quotes from Antony Beevor

A blend of fact and fiction has been used in various forms since the dawn of creative writing, starting with sagas and epic poems.

At the beginning of June 1944, the war was reaching a climax. German troops had been brutalised by the savagery of the ongoing fighting in Russia, where the Red Army was secretly preparing its vast encirclement of the Germans' Army Group Centre.

I read round the subject, I make a skeleton outline, and then I start work in the relevant archives. During the marshaling of the material, I copy the material from each archive file across to the relevant chapter in the skeleton outline.

Of course history is easily manipulated - though that makes it even more important for us to know what actually happened.