Download or read book A Dinner of Herbs written by John Verney and published by Paul Dry Books. This book was released on 2019-04-03 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1943, after parachuting into Sardinia to raid a German airfield, John Verney and several of his comrades from the British irregular forces were captured and sent to a POW camp in Italy’s Abruzzo region. As the Allies attempted to retake the country, Verney and two others made their escape. For months, they survived on the generosity and bravery of the local Italians who fed them and kept them hidden in haylofts and mountain caves―despite the scarcity of resources and the dangers they themselves faced by harboring English soldiers. Twenty years after the war, Verney revisited the scenes of his imprisonment and escape, and the result is both an enchanting evocation of Southern Italy and an exhilarating story of wartime daring. He recounts the ironic upsides of being a prisoner of war (“for the first time in four long years, I was free to do entirely what I wanted, which was to read as much as possible and try to learn to draw and write”) as well as the anxiety aroused by the possibility of attempting an escape. He describes the extremes of boredom, hunger, discomfort, and mutual irritation that he and his companions faced after their escape, and the immense capacity for tolerance and goodness that they discovered in each other―and especially in the desperately poor Italian families who helped them. Verney writes with a deceptive ease and wit, which reveals a subtlety and a candor that make this book as penetrating as it is delightful. “Delightful reading.”―Economist on Going to the Wars “This short, witty book is a triumph.”―Observer on Going to the Wars "One of the best memoirs of the Second World War."―The Independent on Going to the Wars “This book is unclassifiable: commentary, autobiography, satire by turns: but it is wholly readable, wholly successful. The author stands spokesman for a whole generation.”―Daily Telegraph on Going to the Wars
Download or read book Going to the Wars written by John Verney and published by Paul Dry Books. This book was released on with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “My brother officers. Are they human?” Thus reads the first journal entry of twenty-three-year-old John Verney, graduate of Eton and Oxford, lover of modern art and literature, who has, almost on a whim, joined a part-time cavalry regiment of the British Army in 1937. At the outbreak of World War II two years later, Verney arrives in the Middle East and there learns, almost in spite of himself, to be a soldier. In 1943, he becomes a parachutist and leads a “drop” into Sardinia to attack German airfields. His adventures there―two weeks wandering through enemy territory, his capture, and his eventual escape―are brilliantly told. Woven into the fabric of this narrative of a young man growing reluctantly to maturity and coming to terms with military life, are Verney’s thoughts and feelings about his wife, Lucinda, and the child he has never seen, and his longing to return to them. “Delightful reading.”―The Economist “This book is unclassifiable: commentary, autobiography, satire by turns: but it is wholly readable, wholly successful. The author stands spokesman for a whole generation.”―Daily Telegraph “This short, witty book is a triumph.”―Observer “An exciting writer.”―Raymond Mortimer, Sunday Times
Download or read book George Jellicoe written by Nicholas C. Jellicoe and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2021-07-21 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George Jellicoe, son of Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, commander of the British Grand Fleet at Jutland, was never compromised by his privileged upbringing. In this insightful biography, his son describes a life of action, drama, public service and controversy. George’s exploits with the newly formed SAS, as David Stirling’s second-in-command, and later commanding the SBS, make for fascinating reading. Over four years it embraced the North African and Mediterranean campaigns and culminated in the saving of a newly-liberated Athens from the communist guerrillas of ELAS. The brutality of Stalinist communism led him to join the post-war Foreign Office. In Washington he worked with Kim Philby and Donald Maclean in the cloak and dagger world of espionage. Resigning in 1958 so he could marry the woman he loved, he turned to politics. Although his ministerial career ended in 1973 after unwittingly become entangled with the Lambton scandal, he continued to sit in the House of Lords becoming ‘Father of the House’. He held numerous public appointments including President of the Royal Geographical Society, Chairman of the Medical Research Council, President of the SAS Regimental Association and the UK Crete Veterans Association. Thanks to the author’s research and access, this is more than a biography of a significant public figure. It provides fascinating detail of Special Forces operations and the characters of the countless figures with whom he mixed.
Download or read book Wilfred Thesiger written by Alexander Maitland and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2011-10-27 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A perceptive and gripping biography” of the enigmatic British explorer, photographer, and author of Arabian Sands (Daily Mail, UK). Wilfred Thesiger, the last of the great gentlemen explorer-adventurers, journeyed for sixty years to some of the remotest, most dangerous places on earth, from the mountains of western Asia to the marshes of Iraq. The author of Arabian Sands, The Marsh Arabs and The Life of my Choice, he was a legend in his own lifetime. Yet his character and motivations have remained an intriguing enigma. In this authorized biography—written with Thesiger’s support before he died in 2003 and with unique access to the rich Thesiger archive—Alexander Maitland investigates this fascinating figure’s family influences, his wartime experiences, his philosophy as a hunter and conservationist, his writing and photography, his friendships with Arabs and Africans amongst whom he lived, and his now-acknowledged homosexuality.
Download or read book Special Forces Hero written by Thomas Harder and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2021-04-30 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until the German occupation of his native Denmark in April 1940 Anders Lassen had no interest in the War. Yet over the next five years he became a highly decorated Special Forces legend and the only non-Commonwealth recipient of the Victoria Cross. After taking part in a mutiny on board a Danish ship, he made his way to Scotland. He first joined the Special Operations Executive before serving with the Small Scale Raiding Force, Special Air Service and Special Boat Service. He took part in the daring Operation Postmaster, off West Africa, and raided the Channel Islands and the Normandy coast. He saw most action in Eastern Mediterranean, fighting in Crete, the Dodecanese, Yugoslavia, mainland Greece and finally Italy. In April 1945, now a major aged 24, he was killed at Lake Comacchio, where his gallantry earned him his posthumous VC. This superb biography is not just a worthy tribute to an outstanding soldier, but a superb account of the numerous special force operations Anders was involved in.
Download or read book 2SAS written by Gavin Mortimer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-10-12 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on recently declassified files and interviews with veterans, this is a fascinating history of Bill Stirling and 2SAS – pioneering founders of modern special forces. David Stirling is the name synonymous with the wartime SAS, but the real brains behind the operation was in fact Bill Stirling, David's eldest brother. Bill was described in the SAS War Diary as a 'man from the shadows'; it was an apt description for, unlike his attention seeking brother, Bill shunned the spotlight. Now for the first time the truth – and the triumph – of 2SAS is revealed. Having originally joined the SOE in March 1940, Bill Stirling sailed for Cairo in 1941 and there had the idea for a small special forces unit to be led by his mercurial brother. But despite some success, David allowed the legendary 1SAS to drift under his leadership. Following his capture, Bill re-directed 2SAS, under his personal command, to the strategy he had originally envisaged: parachuting behind enemy lines to gather intelligence. Fully illustrated with rare and previously unpublished photographs, this compelling history details how 2SAS fought with ingenuity and aggression, from Italy and then into France before heading through Holland into Germany. The unit was capable of attacking by parachute, jeep or landing craft, establishing a template for future special forces' operations. Their feats have been overshadowed by the many books that have focused on David and 1SAS. 2SAS corrects this oversight, revealing that the real innovator was Bill Stirling – the true pioneer of Who Dares Wins.
Download or read book Books and Bookmen written by and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Far Away written by Victoria Blake and published by Troubador Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2015-07-09 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tale of grief, survival and the inescapability of the past. In an Italian prison camp in the summer of 1942, British officers captured in Africa are starving. It is in these unpromising circumstances that two men, Michael Armstrong and Harry Maynard, first meet. Before the war, Michael, the son of a Norfolk teacher, was expected to embark on a glittering career in law. Harry is the son of a Hull tram conductor. To relieve the boredom of captivity, Michael suggest that they write together. Initially dismissive, Harry finally agrees and the two men begin to write side by side in the same notebooks. While Michael produces an autobiographical account of his war, Harry writes a fairytale about an orphan girl, Pelliger, who is raised by crows and longs to fly. Centring around her quest for identity, he writes about the most powerful human impulse of longing for love. Many years later, Michael’s son, Ian, is selling his father’s house and stumbles across his wartime notebooks. His dad never spoke about the war but now Ian finds himself encountering a father he never knew. At a charity lunch, Ian meets Rose, Harry’s elderly sister, and her daughter, Clare. Rose identifies Harry as the writer of the fairytale and explains that she longs to find out what happened to her brother, as he never returned home from Italy. She later confides in Ian about her brief encounter with Michael, which led to the birth of Clare. After learning the truth, Ian and Clare decide to travel to Italy to try and solve the puzzle of what really happened to Harry... Far Away paints a vivid and compelling picture of the lives of POWs in Italy and also the lives of the Italians who risked everything to save them. This book will appeal to fans of historical fiction, particularly those with an interest in World War II.
Download or read book Anders Lassen VC MC of the SAS written by Mike Langley and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2016-11-30 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dramatic true story of the heroic Danish World War II soldier who received Britain’s highest military honor. The story of Anders Lassen is one of the most amazing of the Second World War—indeed in the history of the British armed services. From the day he stalked and killed a stag armed only with a knife, Lassen had been recognized as unique. He took part in a series of extraordinary strikes against the Axis powers in West Africa, Normandy, the Channel Islands, the Aegean and Greece, the Balkans, and, finally, Italy. This biography of a remarkable warrior is based on interviews with Lassen’s fellow soldiers and a wealth of original research. It covers each stage of Lassen’s short, brilliant career in vivid detail and offers a penetrating insight into the exceptional courage, confidence, and single-minded motivation that lay behind Lassen’s extraordinary exploits. Mike Langley also reconstructs, using the testimony of survivors, the operation in which Lassen was killed—and for which he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.
Download or read book On the Edge of Democracy written by Rosario Forlenza and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-25 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the Edge of Democracy examines the emergence of democracy in Italy in the wake of World War Two. It examines the nature of the democracy forged in the liminal period after Benito Mussolini, the Duce of Fascism, was removed from government in the summer of 1943. Instead of pouring through institutional accounts, which root the origins of democracy in the establishment of parties and in electoral outcomes, Forlenza focuses on the lived experiences of ordinary people and elites in extraordinary times. Meanings of democracy are not variations of a universal model but emerge as contingent interpretative acts and a symbolization following political and existential crisis under condition of violence and war. On the Edge of Democracy captures a series of key events which saw people torn between going home or staying at the front, between clinging to a disrespected but habitual monarchy or engaging with a republican experiment. Becoming a democracy was also a kind of politically spiritual act: the power of the myth of America and the struggle for order as a function of the cosmic fight between communism and ant-communism in the incipient Cold War had a formative power on the origins, meanings, and characters of post-fascist democracy in Italy.
Download or read book National Union Catalog written by and published by . This book was released on 1956 with total page 680 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes entries for maps and atlases.
Download or read book Openings Outings written by David and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2022-06-07 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Openings & Outings brings together over forty pieces from the long and distinguished career of the writer and commentator David Pryce-Jones. Taking us from a meeting with Rudolf Hess’s widow, to the slums of Tangier, to the front lines of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, with many stops in between, Openings & Outings presents over fifty years of insight, from a writer with endless scope and perspective.
Download or read book Bookseller and Stationery Trades Journal written by and published by . This book was released on 1966 with total page 1016 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vols. for 1871-76, 1913-14 include an extra number, The Christmas bookseller, separately paged and not included in the consecutive numbering of the regular series.
Download or read book Bookseller and the Stationery Trades Journal written by and published by . This book was released on with total page 1208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Library of Congress Catalogs written by Library of Congress and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 696 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book British Book News written by and published by . This book was released on 1966 with total page 1186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book London Magazine written by John Lehmann and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 732 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
