Writing a seven book saga describing the fictional lives of a central London family as they experienced World War Two without planning every incident is probably the hardest task I’ve ever undertaken. The assignment I set was that each novel consists of about 90,000 words, that each one described one whole year and that some of the family would at least make it to the end of the war.

In, The Morrow Family of Newgate Street, there are no contrived circumstances or forced conclusions, nor obligatory dramatisations. The events described, contain their own drama as each set of circumstances naturally and organically dictated the next set of conditions; at least governed by what we understand to have happened throughout the six years of the conflict.

Yet sometimes at the end of each year, I felt that there was nothing else left in my trick bag. Only, for when January arrived once again, circumstances already written about came to my aid. All these characters had to do was survive. My only intention was for the reader to enjoy an intimate read that allowed the merest hint of the considerable damaging effect the war had on an ordinary London family.