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I spent a little time in Germany as a schoolboy learning German, and it's a country I knew very well, spent a lot of time in. I knew the history very well. I've always wanted to do a piece of work about the post-war period, of one sort or another.

I was a student in Germany when Hitler came to power.

Few people know that I grew up in Germany and that my family still lives there.

We left Germany when I was 11.

I was born in East Germany, before the wall came down. We sort of escaped, I guess. I grew up all over the place. Germany, London, back and forth between Minnesota and Germany. I was sort of an army brat, but not in the army.

During the past few years I have led a sometimes hard battle for German foreign policy.

I lived under the Nazis and under the Communists.

When I was 11 years old, my family had to leave East Germany and begin a new life in West Germany overnight. Until my father could get back into his original profession as a government employee, my parents operated a small laundry business in our little town. I became the laundry delivery boy.

I was brought up in the War. I was an adolescent in the Second World War. And I did witness in London a great deal of the Blitz.