The psychological studies carried out on children and citizens of Hull and Birmingham actually happened. They were featured in a BBC documentary on the Hull Blitz and have been the subject of research by Professor David Atkinson of the University of Hull.

According to the Hull Daily Mail, findings from the study remained classified until 2020. Forty leading psychologists carried out the research, and the Hull newspaper quotes Professor Atkinson as saying the results were possibly manipulated by Winston Churchill’s government to justify the devastating raids on Hamburg, Dresden and other German cities.

Before his death, one of the leading scientists revealed that the study concluded that Hull wasn’t going to break, and that the people were resilient, despite the ferocity of the bombings.

However, according to Professor Atkinson, once Churchill’s chief scientist, Frederick Lindemann, got hold of the results, they were ‘misrepresented – some say deliberately – and Churchill was told the Hull survey showed that civilians would break under relentless bombing, especially when they were made homeless.’

In my novel, Churchill, Lindemann and Harris are accused of committing war crimes by my fictional Hull academic, Arnold Southwick. However, I am not seeking to make that case. There are those who fervently believe the bombing of Dresden was indeed a war crime, but equally many who argue it was a legitimate industrial and military target, and that the attack helped to shorten the war in Europe. What is clear is that the bombing of Dresden was one of the most controversial Allied actions of the Second World War, and even Churchill himself expressed doubts after it, saying ‘the destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing’.

Lotti’s fictional first-hand account of the bombing is an amalgamation based on some of the experiences of survivors recounted in the historian Frederick Taylor’s excellent non-fiction account, Dresden: Tuesday, 13 February, 1945.

Much of the action in this novel centres on Gorbitz, a new-build area in the western part of the city. Although the street and pub names are accurate, some of the blocks may not have been completed at the time my fictional events take place – I’ve used a little authorial licence. Similarly, I’m reliably informed that the modern part of the Polizeipräsidium was finished in 1983 and was still an uninhabitable building site in February 1982.

The suicide linked to my (fictional) sports school and the laundry woman with incriminating documents linked to East German sports doping are again based on real events – but the suicide actually happened elsewhere, and after the fall of the Wall in 1989. Jannika and Johannes were too young to have attended such a boarding school – again that is authorial licence.