The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
In 2003, Michael Admiraal and his father embarked on a road trip across Europe to visit eight concentration camps. Along the Roads to Hell is the legacy of this trip; an account of their experience and memories infused with historical fact. Admiraal begins by...
Michael, Along the Roads to Hell recounts the trip you took with your father to visit eight concentration camps across Europe. Why did you want to turn this experience into a book? In a way, the book could be seen as a monument for the special experience that I have...
When discussing concentration camp Dora-Mittelbau in my latest book Along the Roads to Hell, I mentioned the Heeresversuchsanstalt (HVA) Peenemünde. Peenemünde is situated on the north-west corner of the German island Usedom in the Baltic Sea, close to the Polish...
Novels set during the Troubles have done well in recent years. Whether it’s the Booker Prize winning Milkman by Anna Burns or Michael Hughes’ re-interpretation of the Iliad with Country, writers have found new ways to deal with a hugely traumatic time in British and...
David, your novel follows a British battalion on its tour of Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Why did you want to write about this difficult period in British and Irish history? To some extent the Troubles are a forgotten ‘war’ and quite unlike almost any...
By the 1980s the conflict in Northern Ireland had become something of a stalemate, to the extent that, according to the government of the day, an ‘Acceptable Level of Violence’ had been achieved. In today’s risk averse world this statement seems horrifying but back...
January 2025 will be the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, a single event which has come to symbolise the Holocaust. No-one could claim that in the eighty years since there’s been a shortage of literature on the Holocaust: a search on...
Justin, A Leap in the Dark is a historical novel set in the criminal underworld of Edinburgh. Why did you want to write it? I grew up in Scotland and spent part of my youth in Edinburgh, which had and still has a strong hold on my imagination. A Leap In the Dark is...
Diana, many congratulations on your new book, the story of ‘André’ Joseph Scheinmann. How did you find out about this extraordinary man? His son and I were classmates at Harvard, though we never met at university there. When Michel discovered, in our 25th reunion...
I Am André Cher Camarade ... mon capitaine ... mon lieutenant ... Monsieur Le Neveu ... 31AQ ... MI6 #99421 ... #4368 at Natzweiler and #101739 at Dachau ... Martin ... Turquoise ... interprète ... Herr Dolmetscher ... 0419064, French Liaison Officer ... Agent from C...
