Author:Colin Smith
Churchill's description of the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942, after Lt-Gen Percival's surrender led to over 100,000 British, Australian and Indian troops falling into the hands of the Japanese, was no wartime exaggeration. The Japanese had promised that there would be no Dunkirk in Singapore, and its fall led to imprisonment, torture and death for thousands of allied men and women. With much new material from British, Australian, Indian and Japanese sources, Colin Smith has woven together the full and terrifying story of the fall of Singapore and its aftermath. Here, alongside cowardice and incompetence, are forgotten acts of enormous heroism; treachery yet heart-rending loyalty; Japanese compassion as well as brutality from the bravest and most capricious enemy the British ever had to face.
Lucid and comprehensive-a vivid essay on wartime blunders and the post-war bluster that tried to hide them
—— Charles King , Times Literary SupplementExhaustively researched and scholarly-an exciting story and one that benefits from accounts written at the time by various soldiers and observers
—— Beryl Bainbridge , GuardianBetween these covers you will find a wholly unpretentious, terrifyingly honest breakdown of a war-exceptionally harrowing and impossible to put down
—— Mick Middles , Manchester Evening NewsPonting is both incisive and original in his account of what contemporaries called the "Russian War"
—— Michael Kerrigan , ScotsmanGutsy, humorous and a tiny bit snobby, she's a brilliant correspondent and chronicler of the times.
—— Sainsbury's MagazineA wonderful, insightful illustration of the activities, thoughts and feelings of a young woman during the turbulent time of war.
—— Family History MonthlyLively letters from Maureen, a Wren, to her RAF boyfriend kept their romance alive from 1941-45. Eric, who married her, was a lucky man.
—— Saga MagazineChildren are history's forgotten people; amidst the sound and fury of battle, as commanders decide the fate of empires, they are never seen. Yet as Nicholas Stargardt reveals in his heart-rending account of children's lives under the Nazis, to ignore them is to leave history half-written. This is an excellent book and it tells a terrible story... As Stargardt so eloquently reminds us, the tragedy is that children were part of the equation and suffered accordingly
—— Trevor Royle , Sunday Herald'Nicholas Stargardt evokes the individual voices of children under Nazi rule. In re-creating their wartime experiences, he has produced a challenging new historical interpretation of the Second World War
—— History Today