If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years as a writer, it’s that you never know where your next story will come from. In May 2018, the day after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding, I attended the opening of an art show in London. The central painting was a portrait of WW2 veteran, RAF Squadron Leader George “Johnny” Johnson MBE DFM, one of the famous “Dambusters”.  Johnny himself was there to see his portrait unveiled.  Afterwards, I had the opportunity to chat to him and he whispered something so cheeky that it made me laugh out loud.  It also made me see him, then a 97-year-old, as the young man he must have been.  In that moment, the idea for my dual timeline novel THE EXCITEMENTS was born as I realized what fun it could be to explore how a character might evolve over the whole of a very long life. At around the same time, I was commissioned to write the memoirs of female WW2 veterans Patricia and Jean Owtram, two sisters who served in the Women’s Royal Navy and the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry respectively. Working with the sisters during the early months of 2020, right…