Articles

It is impossible to quantify the number of books that have been written about the Second World War.   Read More

The history of the secret intelligence conflict during the Second World War is so well trodden that the pickings for any new writer traversing this ground ought to be thin. Read More

This article was published in The Daily Mail on 9th March Read More

This article was published in The Daily Mail on 20th February Read More

This article was published in The Financial Times on 25th November 2011 Read More

What makes military historian Max Hastings keep on writing about the Second World War? The former Daily Telegraph editor has a voracious capacity for work, rising at 5am and often writing 5,000 words a day. His new book, All Hell Let Loose, runs to 675 pages. By Elizabeth Grice Read More

This article was published in the Daily Mail in September 2011. Three years ago this week, the collapse of the American investment bank Lehman Brothers signalled the onset of the global financial crisis, which has since escalated into a sovereign debt nightmare, boiling around us still. Read More

I have written All Hell Let Loose (published in US as Inferno) with two ideas in mind: first, to try to offer some of my own thoughts about great issues which I haven’t discussed in earlier books, and about which I hope that I may have something new to bring to the party- to complete my personal cycle about the Second World War, if you like. Read More

The White War by Mark Thompson (Basic Books) Many Anglo-Saxons perceive Italy’s role in modern history as marginal and verging upon absurdity. Few American or British people contrived to hate Mussolini and his nation in the Second World War as they hated Hitler and his, because they did not fear Italians in the same way. There were those ponderous jokes which pleased stupid men with large moustaches in English pubs in the 1950s, about Italian tanks lavishly equipped with reverse gears. The day after Italy entered World War I in May 1915, a Slovene child in the Hapsburg Alpine village of Caporetto contributed something to the same legend by exclaiming as he saw Bersaglieri troops cycling towards him in their exotic plumed hats: ‘Daddy, daddy, look at all the ladies coming here on bikes !’ (p.71). Read More