Puts you squarely into the bocage
Antony Beevor has done it again with a cracking account of the D-Day landings and the battle across France. What makes this such a good read is the way he mixes detailed strategic accounts with personal anecdotes. This helps to bring the subject alive in an extremely effective manner.
My only slight reservation is the extent of the criticism levelled at Montgomery. Now, I accept that he had his faults but I think Beevor's account is a little one sided. He bases many of his opinions on Carlo D'Este's writings which is fine if he provides a balance - which he does not do. For an alternative view try The Lonely Leader by Alistair Horne.

D-Day
An excellent book,in the Bevoir style,The historical knowledge & facts & his writing style makes this another book not to miss.( my husbands review)Birthday present!

Real-life history - red in tooth and claw.
Awesome but awful. This meticulously researched and detailed account of the D-Day campaign should be required reading for all secondary school history students. It is not an easy read nor is it a pleasant read. But it is a stark reminder of the hell to which tens of thousands of our young soldiers, sailors and airmen and their US and Commonwealth allies were subjected. Beevor covers the lot - the successes, the failures, the politics and the personalities and with extremely helpful maps to keep the reader in the picture. Excellent in every respect.

Just as boring as Berlin and Stalingrad.
Better qualified reviewers than I have already pointed out the factual errors and failures of interpretation in this book. There is nothing on the plans for D Day, no analysis, no structure, and it merely hops from one anecdote to another. This is social history not military history. In contrast to other reviewers I found Stalingrad and Berlin just as boring and for the same reasons. Only in the Spanish Civil War, where there were no interviews and few memoirs to quote from was Beevor forced to write proper history. Like all military history books published these days in the UK there is a total reliance on 'oral', and the author, usually a semi-literate journalist, merely provides the banal, unedited, linking narrative. This is military history for those with a short attention span or who don't often read military history. The Normandy novice would have no better idea of the battle at the end of this book than at the beginning. Look out for Beevor's next WWII blockbuster - doubtless Dunkirk, Arnhem or El Alamein- but get it out of the library. Or maybe just don't bother. This was not worth the reservation fee.

D- Day, The Battle for Normandy
Excellent book, a very detailed and informative account. You can really only appreciate the book if you have personally visited the battlefields of IInd world War in that area. I would strongly recommend a conducted, guided coach tour.My wife and I did that some 6 years ago and the whole picture became clear to us. what a sacrifice people had put in for our freedom. We need to be forever grateful to them. The book captures these areas very neatly.

Dr Raj Kathane

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