John Stuart Roberts : Most people come to know Sassoon through his prose work and it is easy to understand why. He was a master of the craft of memoir who created a brilliant and accessible world of an idyllic childhood. But I was first captured by his poetry - not the war poetry - but one of his reflective efforts Alone. The last two lines in particular appealed to me:

Being of a religious and contemplative nature, I felt Sassoon to be a fellow spirit. He would be very pleased that it was his 'religious' work that pleased me: he disliked the epithet 'War Poet' and yearned to be recognised as a religious poet after the tradition of Henry Vaughan and George Herbert. Of course it is not fashionable today, any more than in Sassoon's day, to make such a claim but I am on Siegfried's side in this matter.

MF : When did you decide to write a biography of Sassoon, and why ?

JSR : It is difficult to pin point the exact date when I started the biography - probably the actual writing was about 1995 but I know that in October 1997 I had a manuscript which was comprehensive and publishable, then out of the blue came permission to read and to quote from letters and diaries not previously seen. I jumped at the offer and within a year the book was complete. Most of those who have read the biography say that it is easy to read; I am pleased about that, but it was not an easy book to write. On the other hand, having started to write, the words flowed freely with only two serious writing blocks. In a sense Sassoon and I got on very well !

MF : Is it necessary for a biographer to reveal all the intimate details of a subject's private life for a biography to be good ?

JSR : After many years of reading Sassoon's work and researching, the danger was overloading the biography with detail. To prevent this happening I kept imagining that I was introducing him to someone for the first time. There is another problem for any Sassoon biographer which stems from his having written so much about himself, particularly his life up to 1920. People think they know him. But he was a canny old bird; he only told people what he wanted them to hear and thereby created his own image. Towards the end of his life he did not like that image but try as he might he was stuck with it. Privately, as we know from the diaries, he was pouring his hopes and fears out; in particular about his homosexuality and his marriage; perhaps more than anything else the diaries are a record of his battle with his ego - those "unconscious causes of unrest". When writing the biography I used this material judiciously. By that I mean, employing it to elucidate his life, not to gossip about him. For example, once you say he was a homosexual there is no need to go on about it except where it helps to explain other things. He had three major affairs which included what he describes as "the grosser elements of sex"; the book elaborates on these affairs because they were significant. He had other affairs - minor and diverting no doubt - but I judged them not to be central. He was quite a ladies man as well; he encouraged many young and beautiful creatures to waft around him but I saw no point in naming them; the mention of the fact is sufficient. Of course you can be sensational and sell a million copies, but that, to my mind, is not what biography is about.

MF : Do you agree with Sassoon's statement that it would have been better if the sniper's bullet had finished him off ?