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End of the Beginning

On sale

1st October 2012

Price: £8.99

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Selected: ebook / ISBN-13: 9781444762228

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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 – 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.

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Reviews

Daily Mail
Praise for FINEST HOUR: 'Brilliant...should form part of the National Curriculum.'
John Peel, Radio Times
The survivors...have some first-class tales to tell. There's Peter Vaux, an officer in the Royal Tank Regiment who got lost behind enemy lines, and his story is so good that I won't spoil it for you. You'd have to be pretty brutalised not to be moved by it all...Perhaps it really was our finest hour.
New York Times
Personally compelling and politically revealing
Sunday Telegraph
Compelling...Mesmerising stuff.
Air Mail - Journal of the RAF Association
The authors' approach has a warmth and immediacy about it which provides a clear but gripping view of Britain's darkest hour.
Sunday Express
From fighter pilots risking their lives in the skies above England, to squaddies stranded at Dunkirk, to schoolgirls sent abroad to Canada (the book is worth buying just for Bess Walder's account of horror and redemption aboard the City of Benares), this is riveting.
Time Out
Manages to construct the tale in such a way that it breaks free of the text-book approach...Compiled with a pace that could put a lot of thrillers to shame.
Chicago Herald Tribune
a remarkable story of determined, against-the-odds resistance...you have to search long and hard to find one with this kind of richness in the reporting and craftsmanship in the telling.