Fight to the Last Man

Dunkirk

The incredible story of the May 1940 rescue of British soldiers fleeing capture and defeat by the Nazis at Dunkirk

* * * Special 75th Anniversary Edition * * * 
 
Hugh Sebag-Montefiore's Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man tells the story of the rescue in May 1940 of British soldiers fleeing capture and defeat by the Nazis at Dunkirk. 
 
Dunkirk was not just about what happened at sea and on the beaches. The evacuation would never have succeeded had it not been for the tenacity of the British soldiers who stayed behind to ensure they got away. Men like Sergeant Major Gus Jennings who died smothering a German stick bomb in the church at Esquelbecq in an effort to save his comrades, and Captain Marcus Ervine-Andrews VC who single-handedly held back a German attack on the Dunkirk perimeter thereby allowing the British line to form up behind him. 
 
Told to stand and fight to the last man, these brave few battalions fought in whatever manner they could to buy precious time for the evacuation. Outnumbered and outgunned, they launched spectacular and heroic attacks time and again, despite ferocious fighting and the knowledge that for many only capture or death would end their struggle. 
 
'A searing story . . . both meticulous military history and a deeply moving testimony to the extraordinary personal bravery of individual soldiers' Tim Gardam, The Times 
 
'Sebag-Montefiore tells [the story] with gusto, a remarkable attention to detail and an inexhaustible appetite for tracking down the evidence' Richard Ovary, Telegraph 
 
Hugh Sebag-Montefiore was a barrister before becoming a journalist and then an author. He wrote the best-selling Enigma: The Battle for the Code. One of his ancestors was evacuated from Dunkirk.

A searing story . . . both meticulous military history and a deeply moving testimony to the extraordinary personal bravery of individual soldiers

Sebag-Montefiore tells [the story] with gusto, a remarkable attention to detail and an inexhaustible appetite for tracking down the evidence

Several fine books have been written about "the miracle of Dunkirk", but none better than this

Hugh Sebag-Montefiore's best-selling books are Enigma: The Battle for the Code, Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man and Somme, a Sunday Times top ten bestseller. He lives in north London with his wife and three children.

SPECIAL 75TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION reveals for the first time five unabridged personal accounts describing what it was really like in the front line in and around Dunkirk. 
 
Rescuing the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk was not just about what happened at sea and on the beaches . . . 
 
At the end of May 1940, the German panzer divisions, which had bludgeoned their way through France, halted at the canal line south of Dunkirk. Three days later they advanced again intending to encircle and capture half a million soldiers, many of them British. They would have succeeded had it not been for the heroic British soldiers who stood in their path. Their job was to shield the corridor down which the rest of the Army was retreating to Dunkirk; they were not to give way until they had fired their last bullets. They were to fight to the last man.

Hugh Sebag-Montefiore

Magisterial, exemplary, heartbreaking. So original is the material, and so inventive is Sebag-Montefiore's approach . . . that this well-known tale is rendered strange again. Written with great style and sensitivity, superbly illustrated with many original plates and beautifully drawn maps, Sebag-Montefiore's brilliant new study will set the benchmark for a generation

Sebag-Montefiore tells it with gusto, a remarkable attention to detail . . . The sense of confusion, anxiety, uncertainty, and intrepid courage which characterized this disastrous campaign is captured more successfully than any other existing account

A beautifully crafted, blow-by-blow account with deep insight into the lives of these diverse young men

In his previous book, Dunkirk, one of Sebag-Montefiore's talents as a historian is never to lose sight of the variety of individual experience. It is impossible to read this book without being stuck afresh by the ripples of mourning and anxiety spreading out from the battlefield in France

Hugh Sebag-Montefiore's heroes are the junior officers and the ordinary soldiers. Their voices emerge loud and clear in his pages . . . The best historians of the war have always made good use of the words written by the participants themselves, but few have done so as effectively as here

The author's combination of thoughtful analysis with first-hand testimony from army soldiers, cameramen and diarists lends a gritty immediacy

Comprehensive, authoritative and meticulously researched... [Of recent publications] it is the weightiest and best written

Having read almost everything that has been written on this battle, I can vouch this is the best account yet.

Comprehensive, authoritative and meticulously researched... [Of recent publications] it is the weightiest and best written.

Into the Breach

No conflict better encapsulates all that went wrong on the Western Front during World War I than the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The tragic loss of life and stoic endurance by troops who walked towards their death is an iconic image - but this critically-acclaimed bestseller, on the four months of battle, shows the extent to which the Allied armies were in fact able to break through the German front lines again and again. 
 
In eight years of research, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore -- the author of Dunkirk -- has found extraordinary new material from Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, and the British - from heartbreaking diaries and letters to hitherto unseen Red Cross files - recounting their experiences amid the horror of war. It has been hailed as the best book about the battle, which, though not an Allied victory, was the beginning of the slide towards German defeat.

Hugh Sebag-Montefiore

Praise for Somme

Magisterial, exemplary, heartbreaking. So original is the material, and so inventive is Sebag-Montefiore's approach . . . that this well-known tale is rendered strange again. Written with great style and sens ...

Sebag-Montefiore tells it with gusto, a remarkable attention to detail . . . The sense of confusion, anxiety, uncertainty, and intrepid courage which characterized this disastrous campaign is captured more su ...

A beautifully crafted, blow-by-blow account with deep insight into the lives of these diverse young men

Magisterial, exemplary, heartbreaking. So original is the material, and so inventive is Sebag-Montefiore's approach . . . that this well-known tale is rendered strange again. Written with great style and sens ...

Sebag-Montefiore tells it with gusto, a remarkable attention to detail . . . The sense of confusion, anxiety, uncertainty, and intrepid courage which characterized this disastrous campaign is captured more su ...

A beautifully crafted, blow-by-blow account with deep insight into the lives of these diverse young men

Magisterial, exemplary, heartbreaking. So original is the material, and so inventive is Sebag-Montefiore's approach . . . that this well-known tale is rendered strange again. Written with great style and sens ...

Sebag-Montefiore tells it with gusto, a remarkable attention to detail . . . The sense of confusion, anxiety, uncertainty, and intrepid courage which characterized this disastrous campaign is captured more su ...

A beautifully crafted, blow-by-blow account with deep insight into the lives of these diverse young men

Books by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore

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