Showing 1–12 of 287 resultsSorted by latest
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£22.00
In 1939, when Ian Buruma’s epic opens, Berlin has been under Nazi rule for six years, and its 4.3 million people have made their accommodations to the regime, more or less. When war broke out with Poland in September, what was most striking at first was how little changed. Unless you were Jewish. Then life, already hard, was soon to get unfathomably worse. By 1943, with the German defeat at Stalingrad, ordinary life in Berlin would acquire an increasingly desperate cast. The last three years of the war in Berlin are truly a descent into hell, with a deranged regime in desperate free fall, an increasingly relentless pounding from Allied bombers, and the mounting dread of the approaching Soviet army. And by war’s end Berlin’s population had fallen by almost half. Among the people trying to stay alive in the city was Ian Buruma’s own father, a prisoner conscripted into forced labour in the war economy along with 400,000 other imported work
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£25.00
The Hotel Lutetia is a Paris institution, the only ‘grand’ hotel on the city’s bohemian Left Bank. Ever since it opened, it has served as a meeting place for artists, musicians and politicians. Andre Gide took his lunch here, James Joyce lived in one of its rooms, Picasso and Matisse were regular guests. It has a darker history, too. During one short period, it became a focus for some of the most dramatic and terrible events in recent history. In the 1930s the Hotel Lutetia attracted intellectuals and political activists, forced to flee their homes when Hitler came to power, who met here with the hope of forming an alternative government. But when war came, Paris was occupied, and the hotel became the headquarters of the German military intelligence service – and the centre of their operation to root out enemies of the Reich.
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£20.00
In 1940, Private Raymond Bailey, a 21-year-old Vauxhall motors apprentice, was captured in northern France, becoming a Nazi prisoner of war. But he wouldn’t remain one for long. ‘The Longest Walk Home’ is the incredible account of his daring 2000 mile escape across Europe and over the Pyrenees, to the safety of British Gibraltar, and home in time for Christmas. Along the way Ray has nerve-shredding encounters with German soldiers and the Spanish Civil Guard. Often he is exhausted and starving. All that keeps him going is his youthful energy, unfailing optimism, and the kindness of strangers who risk their own safety to help him. Ray’s escape is remarkable, but so too is his memoir.
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£25.00
Tells the true, but scarcely known, story of a group of secret rebels against Hitler. Drawn from Berlin high society, they include army officers, government officials, two countesses, an ambassador’s widow and a former model – meeting in the shadows, whether hiding and rescuing Jews or plotting for a Germany freed from Nazi rule. One day in September 1943 they gather for a tea party – unaware that one among them is about to betray them all to the Gestapo. But who is the betrayer of a circle themselves branded ‘traitors’ by the cruellest regime in history?
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£10.99
This is a heart-stopping countdown narrative recreating the liberation of Paris in 1944, one of the great and most dramatic hinge moments of WW2. When the Germans marched in and the lamps went out in the City of Light the millions who loved Paris mourned. Liberation, four years later, triggered an explosion of joy and relief. It was the party of the century and everybody who was anybody was there. General Charles de Gaulle seized the moment to create an instant legend that would take its place alongside the great moments in French history. After years of oppression and humiliation Parisians had risen to reclaim their city and drive out the forces of darkness – or so the story went. This account of the liberation, packed with revelation, tells the story of those heady days of suspense, danger, exhilaration – and vengeance – through the eyes of a range of participants.
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£10.99
The Battle of Arnhem is one of the best-known stories in British military history: a daring but thwarted attempt to secure a vital bridgehead across the Rhine in order to end the war before Christmas. It is always written about, with the benefit of unerring 20/20 hindsight, as being doomed to fail, but the men who fought there, men of military legend, didn’t know that that was to be their fate. By focusing on the events of one day as they happened through the eyes of the British participants and without bringing any knowledge of what would happen tomorrow to bear, Al Murray offers a very different perspective to a familiar narrative. Some things went right and a great many more went wrong, but recounting them in this way allows the reader to understand for the first time how certain decisions were taken in the moment and how opportunities were squandered.
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£22.00
On 14 August 1943, Adam Hart’s great-grandfather Frank Griffiths took off from RAF Tempsford, the SOE ‘Special Duties’ airbase in rural England. Frank and his crew were on a secret midnight mission codenamed Operation Pimento, but they were shot down near Annecy in southeast France. Only Frank survived. Though seriously injured, Frank felt it was his duty to get back to England to continue the fight against the Nazis. He embarked on a perilous, 1200-mile, 108-day escape across Europe, via the attic of a brothel, a Frenchwoman’s chimney and a Spanish prison cell. 79 years later, Frank’s 22-year-old great-grandson Adam Hart retraced the epic escape through France, Switzerland and Spain. His emotional encounters with descendants of people who’d risked their lives to help his great-grandfather reveal the enduring legacy of Operation Pimento and how we should never forget their sacrifice.
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£12.99
The true story of the motley group of Allied men and women who worked to manage Stalin’s mercurial, explosive approach to diplomacy during four turbulent years of World War II.
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£22.00
‘SAS Great Escapes Four’ recounts how soldiers of the world’s most famous fighting force, the SAS, carried out some of the most daring escapes of World War Two. Ranging from the infamous desert campaign of 1944 to the unforgiving terrain of the Vosges Mountains, these inspirational narratives include the tale of three Captains escaping an Italian Prisoner of War Camp in 1943; a perilous escape across Europe aided by the Resistance networks of Holland, Belgium; and a death-defying return to Britain via boat, tunnel and train. Each account plunges the reader into the escapees’ experiences – sharing the most terrifying yet astounding moments of their lives.
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£20.00
‘Mission Europe’ tells the remarkable history of the women who worked for Special Operations Executive across occupied Europe throughout the Second World War.
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£22.00
This is the forgotten tale of MI6’s top spy in Nazi Germany and his bid to stop the Second World War. In the world of espionage, where the accounts of renowned spies often dominate the narrative, this is a rare gem – an untold story of a completely unknown spy. Baron William de Ropp, a Baltic German aristocrat, wasn’t just any ordinary spy; he was MI6’s top-secret agent in Nazi Germany from 1931 to 1939, managing to escape Berlin just before war broke out. This unsung hero had direct access to Adolf Hitler and an inside track on the Nazi regime. His reports, shrouded in secrecy, had the power to shape British policy toward Germany in a pivotal period of history. ‘The Spy and the Devil’ is a riveting tale of espionage, intrigue, and the untold impact of one man’s secret mission on the course of history.
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£10.99
There are no such thing as an easy victory in war but after triumph in Tunisia, the sweeping success of the Sicilian invasion, and with the Italian surrender, the Allies were confident that they would be in Rome before Christmas 1943. And yet it didn’t happen. Hitler ordered his forces to dig in and fight for every yard, thus setting the stage for one of the grimmest and most attritional campaigns of the Second World War. By the start of 1944, the Allies found themselves coming up against the Gustav Line: a formidable barrier of wire, minefields, bunkers and booby traps, woven into a giant chain of mountains and river valleys that stretched the width of Italy where at its strongest point perched the Abbey of Monte Cassino. James Holland has drawn widely on diaries, letters and contemporary sources to write the definitive account of this brutal battle.
