Ross Kemp on Afghanistan

Jan 11, 2025 4:00 PM

Author:Ross Kemp

Ross Kemp risks all to tell the story of the British soldier in Ross Kemp on Afghanistan.

He has played an East End hardman, an SAS soldier and investigated vicious world gangs. Now Ross Kemp is taking on perhaps his hardest assignment of all - the Taliban. In order to prepare for this life-threatening ordeal, Ross Kemp trains with the First Battalion Royal Anglians in England's subzero temperatures, practicing firing SA 80 rifles and .50 calibre machine guns, getting to know the soldiers and learning the tactics they use to stay alive. Sent with them to Camp Bastion in Afghanistan's Helmand province, he immerses himself fully: he endures the stifling heat, the constant threat of snipers, RPG attacks, suicide bombers and land mines. In short, he discovers first hand what it's like to fight on the frontline.

It's the closest he's ever come to dying - bullets fizzing inches from his head as they hit the ground on either side of him. After two harrowing and arduous months Ross returns to England, but there is little relief to be had as he meets the mothers of soldiers killed in the conflict. Then in September 2008 he goes back to the war zone, to see how the men he grew so close to are faring, to check how many of them are still alive. Ross Kemp on Afganistan is a fascinating, horrifying and often moving insight into the brutal reality ordinary soldiers have to face in one of the world's most dangerous and volatile regions.

Ross Kemp was born in Essex in 1964, to a father who was a senior detective with the Metropolitan Police and had served in the army for four years. He is a BAFTA award-winning actor, journalist and author, who is best known for his role of Grant Mitchell in Eastenders. His award-winning documentary series Ross Kemp on Gangs led to his international recognition as an investigative journalist.

Reviews

Superlative memoir of survival ... Few wartime memoirs convey with such harrowing immediacy the evil of the Nazi genocide ... Her book is a model documentary

—— Daily Telegraph

Not only a record of terrible deprivation but also a kind of unexpected nobility ... extraordinary

—— Margaret Forster

Lucidly told with deeply etched personality sketches,thanks to the author's use of her teenage diary, now in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

—— Kirkus reviews

This vividly detailed and taut narrative is a fitting tribute to the bravery of victims and righteous gentiles alike

—— Publishers Weekly

Brilliantly readable

—— Lancashire Evening Post

Well-paced, a thoroughly polished, professional piece of work. A macabre family saga

—— A. N. Wilson , Evening Standard

An entertaining study of power and personality portrays the strutting absurdity and grotesque glamour of the last emperors on the eve of catastrophe

—— Simon Sebag Montefiore , Financial Times

Fascinating. Carter is a gifted storyteller and has written a very readable account

—— Independent

Carter's intelligent, entertainging and informative book folds dynastic and political narratives into a panoramic account of Europe's road to war

—— London Review of Books

In her group biography of three monarchs, Carter has succeeded in painting their personalities in vivid colours...she brings an excellent biographer's eye for the telling detail...the great appeal of this book lies in it narration and comparative analysis of the life and personality of her imperial subjects...well-researched and expertly written...an engaging and remarkably even-handed portrayal

—— The Times Literary Supplement

That these three absurd men could ever have held the fate of Europe in their hands is a fact as hilarious as it is terrifying. I haven't enjoyed a historical biography this much since Lytton Strachey's Victoria

—— Zadie Smith

Miranda Carter writes with lusty humour, has a fresh clarifying intelligence, and a sharp eye for telling details. This is traditional narrative history with a 21st-century zing. A real corker of a book

—— History Today

A highly original way of looking at the years that led up to 1914

—— Antonia Fraser , Sunday Telegraph Books of the Year

Carter deftly interpolates history with psychobiography to provide a damning indictment of monarchy in all its forms

—— Will Self , New Statesmen Books of the Year

A depiction of bloated power and outsize personalities in which Carter picks apart the strutting absurdity of the last emperors on the eve of catastrophe

—— Financial Times Books of the Year

Takes what should have been a daunting subject and through sheer wit and narrative élan turns it into engaging drama. Carter has a notable gift for characterisation

—— Jonathan Coe , Guardian Books of the Year

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