Book description
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. '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.' Phil Craig, the creator
of the Finest Hour TV series, is a distinguished independent producer of
political and historical documentaries. Tim Clayton, a former research
fellow at Worcester College, Oxford, is a specialist is
eighteenth-century history and culture. He is a leading authority on the
printed images of that period. His previous bestselling books include
FINEST HOUR, END OF THE BEGINNING and TRAFALGAR, described by the
Observer as 'a landmark book'.
