James Holland

Nothing can prepare a squadron of fighter pilots, trained in the English countryside, for the rigours of the desert. This is a dramatic and romantic epic centred on a small group of RAF fighter pilots during the Second World War.

Cet ouvrage, détaillé et bien documenté, peut être exploité à divers niveaux. Les informations historiques et le répertoire des instruments peuvent servir à un public assez large, alors que plusieurs pages sur la musique particulière à ces instruments conviennent davantage aux musicologues. Le répertoire proprement dit, p. 49-208, présente en ordre alphabétique des informations sur environ 150 instruments groupés en trois sections. [SDM].

D-Day and the 76 days of bitter fighting in Normandy that followed have come to be seen as a defining episode in the Second World War. Its story has been endlessly retold, and yet it remains a narrative burdened by both myth and assumed knowledge. In this reexamined history, James Holland presents a broader overview, one that challenges much of what we think we know about D-Day and the Normandy campaign. The sheer size and scale of the Allies' war machine ultimately dominates the strategic, operational and tactical limitations of the German forces. This was a brutal campaign. In terms of daily casualties, the numbers were worse than for any one battle during the First World War.

May 1940. Sergeant Jack Tanner has been posted to a training company on the south-east coast of England. But all is not well in the camp. The mysterious death of two Polish refugees leads Tanner to believe there has been foul play. When he and his corporal, Stan Sykes, are nearly killed, Tanner finds his suspicions directed at an old comrade from his early days in the army. As the Germans launch their Blitzkrieg in Europe, training is abandoned and the entire company are sent to join the battle to stop Hitler's drive across the Low Countries. Almost immediately, they are thrust into the thick of the action and cut off from the rest of the battalion.Trapped behind the enemy advance, Tanner must use all his ingenuity to get his men back to Allied lines. Soon enmeshed in the long withdrawal to the French coast, Tanner, Sykes and his new platoon commander, Lieutenant John Peploe, find themselves pitted against not only the die-hard Nazis of the SS 'Death's Head' Division but also the great panzer commander himself, General Rommel. Even then, in the chaos of retreat, Tanner must deal with the corrosive treachery bubbling within the company's ranks – and an enemy more deadly than the Germans – if he and his men are to have any hope of surviving the mayhem of Dunkirk...

April 1940. Nazi Germany has invaded neutral Norway. Fleeing north are three officers of the King's Guard - men who have been entrusted by the Norwegian King to get leading scientist Hening Sandvold out of Oslo to safety. As Sergeant Jack Tanner and his comrades are pushed back from Lillehammer, they are stranded in the mountains, where they stumble across Sandvold and his protectors, and then a French patrol of alpine troops. Sandvold holds the key to a secret that could change the outcome of the entire war - but the odds are stacked against this ragtag group of soldiers and civilians making it to safety.

"July 1943. With North Africa secured, the Allies launch an invasion of Sicily, and the 2nd Battalion, King's Own Yorkshire Rangers are in the van of the assault on the Italian beaches. Now B Company Commander, Tanner's promotion has brought him fresh problems. Not only has his new Battalion Commander decided to make his life as difficult as possible, but he and his men soon find themselves battling against some of the toughest troops in the Wehrmacht. In the bitter fighting that follows, Tanner witnesses a new kind of warfare where the end will justify the means. Erstwhile outlaws, the Sicilian mafia are supposedly on the side of the Allies but their real purpose is feathering their own nests. And it is not just the Mafia who are playing dirty. It soon becomes clear that in the quest to force Italy out of the war, compromises and brutal choices need to be made - choices where the lines between right and wrong have become horribly blurred. Forced to question the cause for which he has fought so long, Tanner and his trusted sidekick, Sykes, find themselves embroiled in a fight that has become deeply personal, where they have to use all their resolve, skill and experience if they are to have any chance of survival"--Publisher's description.

At the end of June 1940, with Western Europe overrun by the Germans, the Nazi war leaders knew that RAF Fighter Command had to be subdued before the invasion of Britain could take place. They set about this destruction early in July. High above the summer fields, Churchill's few fought with unsurpassed courage and skill. The battle was a national crusade that united the British people and was followed with awe and deep anxiety by the Western world. - Back cover.

"James Holland's The Rise of Germany, the first volume in his War in the West trilogy, was widely praised for Holland's impeccable research and narrative skills. With a wealth of characters from across the western theatre of WWII, Holland told a captivating story and used new research to challenge our assumptions and reframe our understanding of this momentous conflict. As The Rise of Germany ended, the Nazi war machine looked to be unstoppable. Germany had taken Poland and France with shocking speed. London was blitzed by the Luftwaffe, and U-boats harried Allied shipping. But Germany hadn't actually won the Battle of Britain or the Battle of the Atlantic, and was not producing airplanes or submarines fast enough. And what looked like victory in Greece and Crete had expended crucial resources in short supply. In The Allies Strike Back, while Germany's invasion of Russia unfolds in the east, in the west, the Americans formally enter the war. In North Africa, after setbacks at the hands of Rommel, the Allies storm to victory. Meanwhile, the bombing of Germany escalates, aiming to destroy Nazi industry and crush civilian morale. The Allies Strike Back is a captivating book by a supremely skilled historian"--