When administrative boredom led young British army officer Antony Beevor to write his first novel, it transformed his life. 'Like most first novels it was autobiographical, but with it I realised why I had joined the army,' he says. 'When I was a small child I was on crutches. Obviously, I had a tremendous physical inferiority complex. Having realised that, I couldn't stay on in the army. It was quite a shock.'
Despite initially having literary ambitions fuelled by 'the innocence and arrogance of youth', he was destined instead to draw on his passion for history and his military experience to become one of the world's most popular authors on modern warfare.
Understanding the past is an essential part of knowing ourselves, he says, but he is emphatic that history does not simply repeat itself.
Furthermore, he laments the spread of pseudo-history propagated by Hollywood and the internet, arguing that it erodes a proper understanding of the past.
Beevor has become renowned in the last decade for his innate skill as a historical writer who balances captivating narratives with factual accuracy. Stalingrad - which picked up the first Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson Prize for History and the Hawthornden Prize for Literature in 1999 - and Berlin: The Downfall 1945, are seen as his seminal works.
But other non-fiction titles, including The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War, Crete: The Battle and the Resistance, Paris After the Liberation, 1944-1949 and The Mystery of Olga Chekhova, have also won international plaudits.
Beevor thankfully acknowledges that while his first novel provided useful, unintended psychoanalysis, it never made it into print. He wrote another four novels, 'which didn't do too badly, but weren't enough to survive on'. His publishers saw an opportunity for greater success by drawing on his military experience and passion for history.