November 30th will see the 160th anniversary of the Battle of Franklin, fought in Middle Tennessee towards the end of the last full year of the American Civil War. As Franklin was a central part of my inspiration, I couldn’t let it pass unmentioned. Sam Watkins, a private in the 1st Tennessee, and fighting only a little way north of his home, wrote, ‘I shrink from butchery. Would to God I could tear the page from these memoirs and from my own memory.’

I’m reading Whirligig and loving it! In fact, I plan to read my whole Shire’s Union trilogy back-to-back. How conceited is Buxton, you might be thinking, to read his own work and trumpet about it. But I’ve never understood those writers or actors who cringe at the idea of enjoying their own work. To be honest, I think most of them are putting on an act, self-deprecation or embarrassment judged a safer harbour than admitting they secretly read their back catalogue under the duvet with a torch. I’m having a ball, and I don’t care who knows it.

I couldn’t say how many Civil War regiments there were. It’s probably into the thousands, and I could have picked any one of them. So why did I plump for the 125^th Ohio, Opdycke’s Tigers as they came to be known, as a home for my fictitious Private Shire? And how then did their glorious story – more fully revealed to me on a visit to the Carter House – bounce me from penning what was planned to be a standalone novel into writing a trilogy?