his Stalingrad book as well.

I'd previously thought that after fighting off the beaches it was a push to Paris, no cake walk but nowhere near as hard as it seems from the book. Also a suprise was how ill-prepared the troops were for fighting in the bocage and what a dreadful place it was to fight in.

His book Gallipoli is excellent too.

how much Beevor, and his mentor John Keegan, have changed the entire genre of miltary history. Up until the early eighties it was the norm to publish long screeds of messages between this General and that Field-Marshall interspersed with maps of various arrayed divisions with arrows pointing this way and that. Interesting enough in an abstract sense but with all the emotional heft of a Lakeland catalogue. Although his inclusive view of the battlefield has been helped by access to Soviet archives that his predecessors had been denied, Beevor's great strength is his credo that war is fought by people.

The reclaiming of Paris section of D-Day is one of the most moving pieces of writing that I've ever read. I had to keep putting the book down so that I wouldn't blub like a great big soft baby. It brought home to me what living daily under occupation might have been like and the startled relief when it ends. A great book.

I've been thinking about what to read on holiday so I'll take this. His other works are excellent too. The Spanish Civil War and Berlin:The Downfall especially so

are what make his histories stand out, and in that vein, George MacDonald Frazer's autobiography 'Quartered Safe Out Here' covering the last months of the war in Asia, is probably the best memoir from an 'other rank' I've read,funny and savage in turns and containing one of the most moving passages I've ever come across, describing a night action in which one of his comrades returns to a man shot and dying, and stays with him, at great risk to himself, until death comes to the friend.

Superb as always

...that so many others share the same opinion as me. Stalingrad, Berlin and D-Day are all fascinating reads - I must search out the Spanish Civil War book.

I like a good bit of 20th century history. I notice that Beevor has written about the Fall of Crete, which I might check out having read Alan Clarke's book. On the subject of Crete, I can thoroughly recommend 'The Cretan Runner'- a first hand account of life in the Cretan resistance by George Psychoundakis.

...Martin Middlebrook has written some wonderful books on various aspects of WWII bombing raids, from individual actions to general campains. His other books (covering the Somme, maritime and the Falklands) are also excellent. Like Beevor, he and his assistant were tenacious interviewers and scourers of the archives, so all contain plenty of first hand reportage.

Pegasus Bridge by Stephen E Ambrose is the detailed account of the specialised operation to take and hold a critical bridge on D-Day. It's a great read.

Beevor's Stalingrad is also very good.