Saul David

“My great-great-grandfather, who made his money in the jute trade, had at one time 600 houses in London, and within three generations, the money was gone.”

“At school, there were more Davids than any other name: more than 20 of us cousins out of 40 pupils. When my older cousins moved on, the school had to close.”

“In March 1915, at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, the British fired more shells in a single 35-minute bombardment than they had during the whole Boer War.”

“Winter horseshoes are equipped with little spikes that give a horse traction on snow and ice and prevent it from slipping.”

“History tells us that a general can move and feed an army as efficiently as he likes, but the real litmus test is the battlefield.”

“If getting a contract was relatively straightforward, writing fiction was far harder than I could have imagined, and there were moments during the long and torturous edit process when it seemed that 'Zulu Hart,' the first of the trilogy, would never be fit for public consumption.”

“Henry Kissinger is perhaps the best-known American statesman of the 20th century.”

“In the early hours of 16 December 1944, the Germans launched their last great offensive of the Second World War against weakly held U.S. positions in the Ardennes Forest, the site of their original Blitzkrieg success against the French in 1940.”

“Few remember that the battle of Rorke's Drift was fought on the same day that the British Army suffered its most humiliating defeat at nearby Isandlwana.”

“Historical facts are the vital framework around which non-fiction writers construct their narratives; they are, quite simply, indispensable.”

“It is surely no coincidence that Napoleon's two greatest heroes were Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. In certain respects, he would outdo them both.”

“If I'm at a book signing, and someone decides to take me to task, it can make for quite a sticky moment.”

“By the time Napoleon abandoned his army to its fate in Poland - arriving back in Paris on 5 December - it numbered fewer than 10,000 effectives. It was a disaster from which he would never recover.”

“Those who read the fiction assume that, because I'm also a historian, I know what I'm talking about.”

“When I was six or seven, we went to the nearest English primary school, St Weonards, about seven miles away. The teaching was good, and this was the start of my beginning to shine as a student.”

“No campaign of the First World War better justifies the poets' view of the conflict as futile and pitiless than Gallipoli.”

“Historians turning their hands to fiction are all the rage. Since Alison Weir led the way in 2006, an ever-growing number of established non-fiction writers - Giles Milton, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Harry Sidebottom, Patrick Bishop, Ian Mortimer and myself included - have written historical novels.”

“I passed the 11-plus, but it was decided that I should take the Common Entrance exam to Monmouth School, the nearest independent. I was never entirely comfortable there, as they didn't have girls, and they played rugby instead of football.”

“We've all faced the charge that our novels are history lite, and to some extent, that's true. Yet for some, historical fiction is a way into reading history proper.”

“There were about 30 children at one stage, running around like savages at a place called Callow Hill, near Monmouth, which was owned by my grandparents. They lived in the big house, but my dad had five brothers and a sister, and they all lived in various houses scattered on the hill.”