You have said the General is your hero?

 Yes, most definitely General William T Sherman is my most admired hero.   As for admirable qualities, his great unselfish patriotism and dedication to the reunification of the United States jumps immediately to mind.  He gave up so much to fight for the Union , including a son he idolized.   He gave up a position he loved as Superintendent at what is now the Louisiana [State] University because he couldn`t bare to be living and working in a State that had seceded from the Union .  Two other admirable qualities that Sherman represents to me, integrity and honesty.  Sherman desired no political or civic role after the war so he spoke his mind and to hell with anyone who didn`t like what he had to say, who didn`t like to hear the truth.  He had no personal agenda, he wanted only to see the States once more united, and for the rebellion to be put down and once halted he to see enemies made brothers again.   Sherman was a scrupulously honest man in an age of political intrigue and corruption.  I often wonder if he and President Lincoln were the only honest men around.  I admire him also because Sherman was a general who hated war.  Would a man who loved war call it hell?  You won`t find one single quote of Sherman`s praising war, but you`ll find plenty condemning it and those who bring it down upon our heads, the politicians, and those who encourage hatred, the media as we call it nowadays.  So misunderstood, he is consistently thought of as a `war-monger` that view of him could not be more wrong or sadden me more, as it would have saddened him, yet he knew history would view him that way.  He was a general who hated battles, who went out of his way again and again through Georgia and the Carolinas to avoid sending his men to their deaths.  While other generals north and south, were fighting massed battles with casualties that are jaw-dropping even by modern world war standards, if Sherman could out-manoeuvre, out flank, or out think the enemy, to attain victory, then that was the route he would take.  His men knew that and they loved Uncle Billy for being sparing of their lives.  Honesty?  Well, consider during his entire life in peace time army and during the Civil War there was not one smell of corruption in regard to Sherman`s name, and while he was head of the army under Grant`s presidency there was certainly plenty of it going on.  I also admire Sherman`s intellect, his love of the theatre, of books, the fact that he had an opinion on every subject under the sun and was ready to share it with anyone who`d listen, and I admire his wonderful desire to learn and apply new methods, even if they were applied to waging a more efficient war.  He was the first general to use what we now call a photocopy machine, to make copies of maps to be distributed among his commanders.  His thought was innovative and his outlook modern.  He was a vulnerable man, a man tormented by the final dawning upon him after Shiloh that he would have to make hard war on a south that he loved, had lived in for many years and would have to destroy if his beloved nation was once more to be whole.

Something else that people over look about  Sherman and which I admire greatly.  He loved the whole of the United States ; equally, he gave and accepted no favoritism.  Take a look at the quote in the front of the book.  For me that says it all about5 Sherman 's feeling for his country.  It is the very opposite of secession.

I must also say I care for Sherman the man as well as the great soldier.  Vulnerable and yet as everyone says of him, grim-visaged.  I love that he was SO contradictory.  Pining down and analysing that ambiguous, paradoxical character has been impossible for every biographer that has dared to take him on.  The great Sherman biography has yet to be written. 

I hold Sherman in highest esteem for helping to save the Union .  For saving America so that it could grow and prosper and become the greatest nation on earth. 

How and when did I learn about Sherman ? 

Right from childhood I have always loved American history, you have so much of it for so young a nation!  But I especially was awed by the history of the west, cowboys and Indians as British kids called it in those days, and you Civil War.  I couldn`t begin to understand how Americans could kill other Americans.   T

he first time I heard the name Sherman was from my father, he was in a tank corps during the 2^nd world war.  A Sherman tank and he told me it was named after an American general.  How cool is that?  Then I watched movies about the Civil War.  Read books and gradually I began to consider my favorite generals.  Not Rebs, goodness no, staunchly Union me, as you`d expect. I suppose I first learned about Sherman in connection with Atlanta .  He always seemed to me to be the `hero`, the general with the `segar` and the cuss words on his lips and the gravely voice. How can a person say why someone above all others captures their imagination so fully?  But Sherman certainly captured my young and older imagination, so much so that I have dedicated the last seven years to researching and writing this trilogy.  I wanted to humanize Sherman .  I wanted to explore the man inside the uniform and go behind that grim visage to hunt down and show those vulnerabilities but I knew that it couldn`t be done in a normal biography.  It had to be written in the form of a novel, and so we have Jesse as a unique and mysterious witness to Sherman`s civil war.  Someone through whom I can explore those vulnerabilities and if I`m sufficiently skilled maybe I can change a few minds, make a few people admit they might have been wrong about him.  Sherman has often been called the most controversial of all the civil war generals, but as I said, he is also the most misunderstood.   The turning point, the moment when I knew I was going to do this work, was my husband taking me to the Green-Meldrim House in Savannah where Sherman stayed for five months before starting for the Carolinas . Sherman`s presence is still in that house.  You only have to stare at the big white bath to imagine him, stark naked, but for his battered slouch hat and segar, up to his sunburned neck, a glass of whiskey balanced on the rim of the bath, enjoying a rare moment of peace.  Somehow for me at that moment, imagining that vision, the old west and the Civil War came together in what might have been a scene from a Sam Peckinpah movie.  Sherman is so easy to do that with, not Grant, not Hancock or George Thomas, certainly not Mead!   Sherman`s persona lends itself to the grouchy, grizzled, crusty, segar chewing heroic figure as played by Jason Robards. 

When you visited the Civil War sites and the Sherman House what stood out from the rest? 

The Sherman House was special.  No place I`d been with Jed, my husband, was comparable and believe me we`ve been to some memorable and stunning places in your incredibly beautiful United States .   We came on a Sunday. We were early the house wasn't yet open.  I think I had goose bumps for the entire time I was there.  I enjoyed the guided tour with Emily.  I bought a Sherman tee shirt in the shop and oh yes, a signed calling card which I have propped up against an American flag mug on the shelf over my computer.  I loved the photographs, many of which I`d never seen before, the artefacts of Sherman and his family, but nothing I saw that day made more of an impression on me, moved me more, than his tent.  I remember sitting on the floor in front of the roped off area for ages, I don`t know how long, well after the house was closed, (the people caring for it that day allowed me to remain there) while my husband was downstairs talking to the docent called Emily and the others.  I sat there staring at the general`s coat on the back of the chair, the oil lamp burning it`s flickering reflection on the canvas, the maps on the desk, the paraphernalia of a general`s headquarter`s bivouac and I was there, sitting on the floor watching him while he sent out an order, or wrote a letter to Ellen Sherman or made one of those intricate little drawings of a bird or a flower to send to his children.  I was there and I could smell the aroma of his segar, stare with admiration and affection at that sharp, grizzled, bearded profile.  I could almost imagine him looking up suddenly, abruptly and demanding to know in that stern and husky voice what in hell I thought I was doing sitting there when the staff wanted to go home to their bivouacs.  It was indeed a very special place to visit, to see, to experience, to feel.  It was after all where my hero was born.  The museum is looked after with love and admiration, with respect for the man who was born and lived there til he was eight.  This respect and admiration for the entire Sherman family was evident in everyone met.  I felt like I was home too.  After being abused and insulted and questioned aggressively in so many places in the South, when I was in the museum I felt like we were among friends at last.  I discovered to my amazement that I wasn't the only one who admired Sherman !  I saw copies of the Fairfield Heritage Magazine and there in black and white were people writing about Sherman who didn`t want to have his memory consigned to the nether region.   That, was my first, last and abiding impression of the Sherman House.  A refuge for Sherminites.  Seriously, as much as I loved our visits to the South, they are pretty much still ready to stone him if he stepped off a Delta plane at Hartsfield Airport , or anyone who has a positive opinion of him and what he accomplished in the Civil War.

You mentioned that this is the first book of a trilogy.  Will all the books feature Sherman and Jesse?

Yes, the three books cover Sherman`s war.  The first one covers Shiloh to Vicksburg , the second Chattanooga to Atlanta and the third the March to the Sea, through the Carolinas and concludes with the victory parade in DC in May 1865.  Jesse is there all the way, by his side, with a whole parcel of mysteries surrounding her existence, who she is, why she’s with Sherman , why is she so devoted to him and so determined to remain at his side, despite her love for the young Ransom.  As I said the books took me seven years to research.  I`m just putting the finishing touches to book two. 

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Will you share a little about yourself for our readers?

 I live in London with my husband Jed, a London cab driver who holds a private pilots licence.

We live a stone`s throw from Sherlock Holmes old stamping ground at 1b Baker Street. I`m a self taught Civil War historian, with Sherman and General Thomas E G Ransom as my specialty.  I think many people are shocked that a woman, and a British woman would want to write about Sherman and the American Civil War.  But in fact I would say to a lesser degree the study of all wars fascenates me.  The study of war itself.  Jed and I have travelled all across America , for research and for pleasure.  We usually visit three or four times a year.  We have many friends in the North and in the South!  One of our best memories is of visiting Lancaster , Ohio . I love it when Americans find out I`ve been to Lancaster .  The people were friendly and we enjoyed the last day of a hot summer before it snowed the very next day!

 Jed and I love America and hope one day to live there.  To those who would still agree with the South`s decision to secede I would say this, take a look at Russia, what was once the mighty USSR and is now just a bunch of rebellious, poor, starving little states and countries fighting each other and the government in Moscow.  If not for General William T. Sherman that would certainly have been America`s fate and as my husband observed the other day, if the South had won the Civil War, or been allowed to leave the Union, the United Kingdom would have been under the jackboot, for it`s damn certain that the Northern states would have been too weak to help us out in the 2<sup>nd</sup> World War and if the Southern states had remained as self serving and determined on independence as they were during the Civil War they would have been unwilling.  So consider this, in saving America Sherman enabled America to save western civilisation from the perpetual darkness, brutality and slaughter of Nazism.  Worth thinking about isn`t it?