Book description
A collection of thirteen stories that offer an inside view of fighting
men poised at the edge of death.
Len Deighton's only collection of shorter fiction, this dazzling array
of stories spans twenty-three centuries of warfare.
From Hannibal's march on Rome - when strange, moving objects terrorise
the troops of one of the toughest and most skilful armies in history -
to the efforts of a belittled Civil War general to get his men to face
the Confederate army; to the dawn skies above an artillery-blasted
French battle-line where a dogfight unfolds, to Vietnam; where two lost
American soldiers stumble across an abandoned military airfield.
Each story in Declarations of War explores the effects of war upon man's
character, how it pushes him to act in a dehumanized, machine-like way,
often leading to extraordinary deeds, both good and ill. It portrays
human conflict through a series of devastating experiences and shows how
great deeds are often but the smallest thread in the large fabric of
war. 'Mr Deighton is really something special' Sunday Times
'A dazzling display of technical skill' New Statesman
'An outstanding writer, as crammed with incidental delights as a fine
pudding with plums' Sunday Times
'Deighton has a desire, unobtrusive but inflexible, to see the truth. He
has an exceptionally just mind' CP Snow in the Financial Times Born in
London, Len Deighton served in the RAF before graduating from the Royal
College of Art (which recently elected him a Senior Fellow). While in
New York City working as a magazine illustrator he began writing his
first novel, The Ipcress File, which was published in 1962. He is now
the author of more than thirty books of fiction and non-fiction. At
present living in Europe, he has, over the years, lived with his family
in ten different countries from Austria to Portugal.
