Napoleon Bonaparte threatened Britain with invasion. Against him stood the Royal Navy and the legendary Admiral Horatio Nelson. On 21 October 1805 a massive naval battle off Cape Trafalgar on the coast of Spain decided mastery of the seas. Then, over the following days and nights, the battleships and their exhausted crews endured a gale of fury.
Sixty years ago, as the German army continued its relentless advance across Europe, Britain - a country ill-prepared for war - faced its darkest hour. Published to tie in with the BBCTV series, Finest Hour recreates the terror, the tragedy and the triumph of the Battle of Britain, through the testimony of those who experienced it. Finest Hour is a powerful and incisive account of the events of 1940, told through the voices, diaries, letters and memoirs of the men and women who survived it - and those who lost their lives. These witnesses of war, with their individual stories of grief and joy, of love and of loss, provide revealing and often controversial new insights into the conflicts and the politics of the period.
The classic bestseller on the Battle of Britain, revised and updated.
1942 - British troops are stranded in the desert, struggling to hold back Rommel's Afrika Corps. Hitler's armies have reached Moscow, and there are murmurs of discontent at home as new doubts emerge about Churchill's leadership. Elsewhere in Europe there is chilling evidence of the mounting persecution of the Jews, stretching from Poland to the Channel Islands. For many, it seems there is little hope. As in their acclaimed bestseller FINEST HOUR, the authors use the personal testimony of ordinary people to tell the story of the war at a moment of great crisis. In END OF THE BEGINNING we meet again some of the people first encountered in FINEST HOUR, and get to know many more. Troops fighting for Montgomery in the desert, RAF pilots bombing German towns, a young Jewish woman deported to Auschwitz from Guernsey, the reality of the Home Front - these stories and many more paint a vivid picture of human endeavour in time of war. And, sixty years on from the Battle of Alamein, END OF THE BEGINNING tells the controversial truth about one of the most famous battles in history - the importance of its lesser-known predecessor and the months of bitter in-fighting between the Allied generals. With precision and compassion, Phil Craig and Tim Clayton again debunk the myths and explore the realities of a crucial year in the history of Britain.
The authors provide information on Diana's troubled marriage to the Prince of Wales, her uneasiness in the constant media spotlight, her secret life spent with James Hewitt, and addresses the allegations that Diana suffered from a personality disorder