Hugh Sebag-Montefiore 

Many of the bedtime stories read to me featured famous events in history.

I became interested in the subject when…

Back in the late 1990s, while researching my first history book Enigma: The Battle for the Code, Sir Harry Hinsley, one of the leading lights at Bletchley Park, told me how problems in breaking the code had led to the Arctic Convoy PQ 17 disaster [in which 24 Allied ships were sunk by German aircraft and U-boats in July 1942]. He described it so vividly that I not only devoted a whole chapter to it in my Enigma book, but I was later prompted to write up the horrific events during other Arctic convoys in my latest book Battle of the Arctic. 

Growing up I was fascinated by…

Many of the bedtime stories read to me, and those which I read myself, featured famous events in history. These included Nelson’s celebrated ‘Kiss me Hardy’ moment during the Battle of Trafalgar; Captain Oates’s ‘I am just going outside and may be some time’ during Scott’s ill-fated Antarctic expedition; and Henry Stanley’s laid-back greeting, ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’, after finally finding the ‘lost’ missionary David Livingstone in East Africa following a seemingly endless search. I think being encouraged to appreciate the sad and the bad taught me how important it is to bring to the notice of my readers those exquisite moments that have touched me most in the histories I have been commissioned to write.