A Hateful Decision

The author is a sure-footed and sensitive guide to this tragic episode, and his deeply researched account strikes a perfect balance between edge-of-the-seat drama and cool analysis.

Telegraph

The summer of 1940 is not short on drama and Operation Catapult – when the Royal Navy turned its guns on the French Fleet to deny it falling into enemy hands – is one the toughest decisions Churchill was forced to make. Edward Abel Smith takes us right into the heart of the drama, as men who worked together as allies faced each other as possible enemies. Minute by minute chances slip away, and pride, fate and war collide.

Al Murray

A mesmerising account. Events play out in real time, shifting focus between the various actors in short, tautly written chapters that ratchet the tension to a climax. Tiny events, meticulously rendered, have the cumulative effect of a good thriller.

The Times (Book of the Week)

A Hateful Decision reads like a thriller and is based on a mass of meticulous and original research. As a result, the tension in the hours leading up to the moment when the Royal Navy's big guns were turned on French warships in the summer of 1940 is portrayed as vividly as the anguish of everyone at every level on both sides who played a part in a fateful military operation in which thousands of sailors lost their lives. By throwing a powerful spotlight on this little-known maritime drama, Abel Smith has made an invaluable contribution to the history of the Second World War.

Jonathan Dimbleby

Meticulously researched and written with panache, A Hateful Decision sheds new light on one of the most compelling yet least known dramas of the Second World War - the destruction of the French fleet by the British navy. Authoritative and revelatory - a must read.

Giles Milton

Abel Smith’s writing is beautiful throughout … painstakingly researched and admirably balanced. A Hateful Decision is exactly the kind of book this neglected episode deserves: one that forces a reckoning with what was done and why.

BBC History magazine

Edward Abel Smith tells this compelling story with energy and panache in this expertly crafted book.

Times Literary Supplement

In war, the worst is not killing the enemy but someone in the way. Read this astonishing book on Churchill's darkest hour.

John Sweeney

Edward Abel Smith brilliantly highlights the often excruciating decisions made by Churchill, the Government and the Royal Navy to protect Britain in 1940. A Hateful Decision is a gripping tale of Britain’s determination to fight on.

Andrew Chatterton, author of Britain’s Secret Defences