Finest Hour: The bestselling story of the Battle of Britain

Craig, Phil; Clayton, Tim

ISBN 10: 1840321784 ISBN 13: 9781840321784

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton, 1999

Synopsis

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. Martin Gilbert, Britain's premier World War II historian introduces 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.

About this title

Review:

A defeated, retreating British Expeditionary Force, the miraculous evacuation at Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the evacuation to America and the Blitz. You couldn't make the story of 1940 dull if you tried. But even the best material has to be threaded into a manageable narrative and Tim Clayton and Phil Craig don't disappoint. Finest Hour is never less than engaging and frequently does rather better. On the jacket blurb, Clayton & Craig seem keen to establish their bona fides as heavyweight historians and claim to have uncovered a "fresh and controversial" account of the political intrigues and betrayals of the period. There's actually nothing really controversial on offer--at least nothing that hasn't been aired elsewhere. If this comes as a disappointment to the authors, it needn't to the reader because we are left with something just as, if not more, valuable, namely an accessible layperson's ride through the political and military manoeuvrings.

Clayton and Craig are particularly good at guiding us through the early days of Churchill's premiership. Read most populist accounts and you would imagine that the moment Churchill took office the bulldog spirit took over and we plucky Brits stood resolute. Not so. The case for appeasement was still being made within the Cabinet up until the evacuation of Dunkirk, as Lord Halifax had a great deal of support for his conciliatory views. Bizarrely, the thing that ultimately counted against him was his title as it was felt the Upper House should not hold sway over the Commons. Where this book excels, though, is in the quality of its eyewitness testimonies. Many books have previously used this technique of threading narrative with the first person but few have found such eloquent speakers. Most eyewitnesses fudge the difficult bits with remarks like, "It was hell". Clayton and Craig's witnesses don't pull their punches. We hear of one Brit who shot a German officer in cold blood and had nightmares for ages afterwards. We hear of the sailor who saw his gunner decapitated. We experience the stench of burnt flesh following the shelling of an ambulance. In short, we are spared nothing. It may not be comfortable reading but you can't ignore it. 60 years after the men and women in these pages fought and died, there's a tendency for the rest of us to take the freedom they gave us for granted. They deserve a better memorial than a slow fading into nothingness. This book ensures they get it. --John Crace

Review:

Hostage is hard to fault. It untangles the crisis into one long strand, and

stretches it neatly across the continents and through the years. Without neglecting the Frederick Forsyth political chicanery, the series focuses on the feelings of the prisoners and their loved ones ...

(THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY)

Don't miss ... Hostage, a brilliantly lucid pulling together of the whole tragic mess of hostage taking in Beirut ... (THE OBSERVER.)

The company responsible for outstanding documentaries on Watergate, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the break up of Yugoslavia turns its attention to the Beirut hostage crisis ... This is history from the mouths of those who made it. (THE SUNDAY TIMES.)

A superbly detailed three part documentary It is a mesmerising story - crisply and coherently told ... with a fantastic array of contributors (THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.)

About this edition

• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1840321784
• ISBN 13: 9781840321784
• Binding: Audio Cassette
• Number of pages: 120