John Ware: Creating the world of WWI from his Blarney Street home

'In writing I have to maintain emotional engagement, and this is where my heart is. It’s with the Royal Munster Fusiliers, third battalion'

The British army at the Battle of Morval in France in the First World War. Ware’s novel follows the Royal Munster Fusiliers into battle. Picture: PA

John Ware has been passionately interested in history for his entire life. And, specifically, in the events of the First World War. As a child, he devoured war stories – both factual and from his comics, and he begged his mother to let him take ‘adult’ WW1 books out of the library.

It’s no surprise that his debut, Dirty Shirt is set in the First World War. The only puzzle is why he has taken such a circuitous route to writing it. In the early nineties, taking an MA at University College Cork, he chose Medieval History. His plan was to go on and take a PhD – but he realised that he wasn’t cut out to be an academic.