I used to be full-time journalist and still meddle in the media.

The world we have created has become increasingly hostile for those brave souls who try to bring the truth to the community. Media correspondents are often killed — sometimes murdered — in trying to photograph or report what is actually happening in the world’s many trouble spots. We don’t give them credit for the risks they take.

My character James wasn’t killed in Sarajevo but he was badly injured and came back scarred in body and soul. In a peaceful English valley he expects to recover and find a new life but the evil he’d seen in Bosnia appears in a different but equally ugly form.

The events in the English setting are pure fiction but based on attitudes and motives that sadly trigger tragedies in any human society and especially the hunger for land which can dominate in rural society.

My last job was editing a farming newspaper, working closely with farmers and others involved in agriculture which evealed the problems and vicissitudes of 21st-century farming — not an easy life. I watched at close quarters the trauma inflicted on the rural community during the UK foot and mouth disaster of 2001.

These days I run a bed and breakfast in the west of England among the glorious countryside of the Marches where a crow or raven can fly quickly over the border into Wales. We tend to have a comparatively old-fashioned way of life, in real touch with the natural world which so many have left behind. A bit of a time warp perhaps but what a joy it can be!

People don't expect a guest house owner to be a writer — or the other way round but it often gives great insight into human behaviour and can touch off many trains of thought. There are some guests who spark immediate empathy and it's great to meet them. Others sometimes just don’t get the place at all.