I played writing as a child, before I could even write. Sat at the kitchen table, drew squiggles and made up stories.

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In the meantime, I've gotten around quite a bit as a business journalist and foreign correspondent and ended up on the west coast of Ireland after working in Munich, Düsseldorf, New York and Sydney. Ireland is an invitation to storytelling. It's raining, the fire is crackling in the fireplace and your thoughts are traveling. But I'm not interested in the tourists' postcard Ireland; Irish history is too sad for that. Behind the green backdrops and the cute stories of fairies and goblins lies a torn country soaked in blood.

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Pretty much every family has been shaped by 1,000 years of British occupation, the famine in the 19th century, the brutality of the church, especially against women, and emigration. The Irish's main export is people who leave to seek their fortune elsewhere. What remains is a people of storytellers who seek healing in the word.

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Anyone who can listen will find a story in every pub here. Then you just have to write them down. For me personally, things have come full circle in Ireland - a childlike desire to tell stories, professional experience in research and a keen interest in history and politics come together to create my books.