“I
always try to find a story in the margins of history, but I don't like to do
too much that's improbable.” – Philip Kerr
A
native of Scotland, Kerr is best known for the Bernie Gunther series of
historical thrillers set primarily in Germany during the 1930s, World War II
and the Cold War. He has authored some
30 books of fiction, several nonfiction works and a dozen children's books,
including the Children of the Lamp
series, under the name P.B. Kerr.
Born 50 years ago today, Kerr started writing in middle school and really never
stopped. In the early 1990s he was
honored as one of Britain’s “Best Young Writers,” and in 2009 he won both the “RBA
International Prize for Crime Writing” (also worth nearly $200 thousand in
cash) and the British Crime Writers' Association's “Ellis Peters Historic Crime
Writing Award.”
He resides near
Wimbledon where he also writes nonfiction and essays and is a frequent
contributor to The Sunday Times and The Evening Standard, although it's his writing “about the recent historical past,” that is his forte’. 
As
for the challenges of writing historical fiction, Kerr said his best advice is
to immerse yourself in that time. “History asks us to imagine ourselves in a
period, but it's a very different situation when you're in that period and
faced with those situations,” he said. “(And)
The
hardest thing is to write about people. First and foremost, you have to
encounter their humanity. That is the only way you can make them live as
characters on the page.”
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