Second World War

A magisterial, single-volume history of the greatest conflict the world has ever known by our foremost military historian.The Second World War began in August 1939 on the edge of Manchuria and ended there exactly six years later with the Soviet invasion of northern China. The war in Europe appeared completely divorced from the war in the Pacific and China, and yet events on opposite sides of the world had profound effects. Using the most up-to-date scholarship and research, Beevor assembles the whole picture in a gripping narrative that extends from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific and from the snowbound steppe to the North African Desert.Although filling the broadest canvas on a heroic scale, Beevor's The Second World War never loses sight of the fate of the ordinary soldiers and civilians whose lives were crushed by the titanic forces unleashed in this, the most terrible war in history.

His singular ability to make huge historical events accessible to a general audience recalls the golden age of British narrative history, whose giants include Gibbon, Macaulay and Carlyle, Beevor can be credited with single-handedly transforming the reputation of military history, The myriad pieces of this intricate kaleidoscope are pieced together with exemplary skill ... This is a splendid book, erudite, with an admirable clarity of thought and expression, His accounts of the key moments in the Second World War have a sense of colour, drama and immediacy that few narrative historians can match, You feel yourself being carried along on the narrative flow, channelled this way and that through the pools and rapids by Beevor's expert helmanship

Antony Beevor's books, include Stalingrad, Berlin, D-Day, The Battle for Spain and the Second World War. His work, which has received major prizes in this country and abroad, has appeared in thirty-three languages and sold more than eight and a half million copies. A former chairman of the Society of Authors, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Historical Society, he has received honorary doctorates and fellowships from five universities. He was knighted in 2017.