Your five books concern different conflicts and different roles women play during war. Let’s start with The Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn. Tell us about this famous journalist and her correspondence.

Martha Gellhorn was one of the first modern women war reporters, and she faced a real challenge in getting access. This collection includes a lot of letters about her struggle to get to the front. She fought for an official way into D-Day, and ended up covertly taking a boat over when the Army put up obstacles. She’s funny, charming and compelling about why gender shouldn’t keep her from being able to cover war.

In a letter of June 24, 1944, she says, “Women correspondents have not appointed me their spokesman and I do not wish to imply that I'm writing this letter on behalf of anyone except myself. I simply call attention to the general problem because there is an injustice here, which affects nineteen people.” There were 19 women trying to get accreditation. She said, “I have too frequently received the impression that women war correspondents were an irritating nuisance who very tiresomely kept asking to be allowed to do their job. I wish to point out that none of us would have our jobs unless we knew how to do them and the curious condescending treatment is as ridiculous as it is undignified.” She goes on to say, “I cannot continue to fail on my mission through no fault of my own.  It is necessary that I report on this war.  The people at home need the most constant and extensive information and my share of that work, humble as it may seem, is my obligation as a citizen.”

It's a fantastic quote. But aside from reporting her share, do women reporters bring anything special to covering conflict zones?

Oftentimes they're almost the only ones who are interested in what women are doing, because the main event is seen as men with guns. Yet if you look at how the economy keeps going, how families keep eating, how homes remain standing, it's because women pull families through despite incredible obstacles. Plus in traditional societies like Afghanistan, it's much easier for women to have access to other women's stories. For The Dressmaker, there's no way that a man could have conducted interviews with women who had never met foreigners. A male reporter would not have been invited inside their homes. Family members would never have allowed it. So without women reporters many stories would go untold.

Let’s move onto Emma’s War, the true story of a British aid worker who became a Sudanese warlord’s wife.

Emma's War looks at how women who enter conflict zones to assist, at times end up getting caught up in the chaos and pathos of war. It's a story of one woman's experience, an aid worker who became the second wife of a Sudanese warlord. It's a journey about idealism and the realities on the ground. And it asks a lot of really powerful questions about what aid does, what aid stops and what aid prolongs. Emma’s War does something that I really tried to do – it brings to life a place that most people will never see and a time that will never be again, in this case Sudan during the 90s. Idealism collides with reality in a number of very painful ways.

What does this strange story tell us about the role of women in war?

It shows what happens when foreign aid workers get caught in the middle of a conflict. When you come face to face with combat, seeing it on the ground really changes you. Emma's War really reflects what happens when you get caught up in conflict, and what happens when – through no part of your own – you are stranded in the middle of it.