Fiction is the enemy of history. Fiction makes us believe in structure, in beginnings and middles and endings, in tragedy and comedy. There is neither tragedy nor comedy in war, only disorder and harm.

It was important to tell people. To let people know that this can happen. Your child's body can stop. Stop breathing, stop beating.

I dislike Tolkien, another Oxonian Old Norse obsessive, with his war games and made-up language in a world without women.

Stories have endings; that's why we tell them, for reassurance that there is meaning in our lives. But like a diagnosis, a story can become a prison, a straight road mapped out by the people who went before. Stories are not the truth.