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1942 – British troops are stranded in the desert, struggling to hold back Rommel’s Afrika Corps. Hitler’s armies have reached Moscow, and there are murmurs of discontent at home as new doubts emerge about Churchill’s leadership. Elsewhere in Europe there is chilling evidence of the mounting persecution of the Jews, stretching from Poland to the Channel Islands. For many, it seems there is little hope. The authors use the personal testimony of ordinary people to tell the story of the war at a moment of great crisis. In this book we meet again some of the people first encountered in the authors’ previous title “Finest Hour” and get to know many more. Troops fighting for Montgomery in the desert, RAF pilots bombing German towns, a young Jewish woman deported to Auschwitz from Guernsey, the reality of the Home Front – these stories and many more painting a picture of human endeavour in time of war. And 60 years on from the Battle of Alamein, the book tells the controversial truth about one of the most famous battles in history – the importance of its lesser-known predecessor and the months of bitter in-fighting between the Allied generals. The authors aim to debunk the myths and explore the realities of a crucial year in the history of Britain.

Summary: In End of the Beginning Tim Clayton and Phil Craig use the same techniques of oral history employed for their previous book. Finest Hour described the events of the first full year of the Second World War, 1940, highlighting the drama of Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain by telling the story largely though the testimony of those who were there. End of the Beginning traces the desperate days from May to November 1942, as Rommel swept through north Africa in a seemingly unstoppable drive towards Cairo, only to be finally halted and defeated by Montgomery’s Eighth Army. The story of the desert war has been told often enough, most recently in John Bierman’s and Colin Smith’s excellent Alamein: War Without Hate, but the use of oral testimony makes End of the Beginning a particularly vivid account. It’s one thing to read a historian’s bird’s eye perspective on battle and quite another to follow, for example, a particular gun-crew in the desert as they struggle to make sense of the seeming chaos surrounding them.

The focus of End of the Beginning is always on north Africa, as indeed was the attention of Churchill and his generals at the time, but the authors also find room to record the experiences of both combatants and non-combatants elsewhere. A nurse working in a hospital on the besieged island of Malta. A US soldier caught up in the fiasco that was the raid on Dieppe. A young woman involved in the briefing of RAF bomber crews flying from airfields in Yorkshire. The strength of this often powerful and moving book lies in the glimpses it offers of ordinary men and women obliged to do their best in extraordinary, and bloody, times. –Nick Rennison

Reviews:

‘Compelling…Mesmerising stuff.’ — Sunday Telegraph

A dramatic, eye-witness tale of what it was like to battle Rommel’s panzers in the desert or endure the siege of Malta. — Carlo D’Este, author of PATTEN, A GENIUS FOR WAR

A matchless picture of a desperate year. It is magnificent. — Western Daily Press

A searing saga about the North African campaign. Clayton and Craig do a marvellous job of illuminating the strategies. — Douglas Brinkley, Eisenhower Centre for US Studies

An absorbing chronicle of warfare that conveys the constant sense of tension and the occasional sense of exhilaration experienced by men in combat. – BOOKLIST

Poignant…this is Britain bloodied and very nearly bowed — The Guardian

Praise for FINEST HOUR: ‘Brilliant…should form part of the National Curriculum.’ — Daily Mail

Ride along with masterful authors from Dieppe to Malta to the foxholes of the warriors who first proved the allies could win. — James Bradley, author of FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS

The authors prove themselves adept at knitting together a range of personal narratives to present a vivid worm’s eye view. — Eastern Daily Press

Their “You are there” technique works powerfully in conveying the gut-wrenching fear of facing Rommel in the turret of a tank. — THE SUNDAY TIMES

This is a splendid book, the experiences of ordinary men and women caught up in an unwanted but necessary war. — Yorkshire Gazette & Herald

admirable…They are accomplished listeners and have blended together eyewitness accounts to produce an exciting narrative. — Laurence James – Daily Mail

Phil Craig, the creator of the Finest Hour TV series, is a distinguished independent producer of political and historical documentaries., Tim Clayton has written extensively on nineteenth and twentieth-century cultural history. He is a producer on the Finest Hour series.