Colin Smith

John Bierman

The Battle of Alamein was one of the greatest set piece battles in World War II and the victory for the allied troops was the turning point in the fortunes of war. Within a year of the battle Mussolini has been toppled and the Anglo-American forces had established a firm presence in Italy.

War Without Hate

Alamein

Documents World War II campaigns between the invasion of Egypt in 1940 and the surrender of Axis forces in 1943, profiling such figures as the "Desert Fox," Lieutenant General Montgomery, and Hungarian adventurer Laszlo Almasy. 25,000 first printing.

Turning Point, World War II

The Battle of Alamein

Penguin Specials are designed to fill a gap. Written to be read over a long commute or a short journey, they are original and exclusively in digital form. In this Special, Colin Smith and John Bierman make the battle of Alamein come alive. A turning point in the Second World War, the battle of El Alamein was the culmination of a military campaign like no other. Fought across desolate arid terrain, the brutal fighting was matched by a camaraderie and respect between enemies as witnessed in no other theatre of war. Combining gritty personal testimonies with thorough journalistic investigation, John Bierman and Colin Smith present a compelling account of a ferocious but compassionate battle and a journey through the unforgiving North African landscape.

North Africa 1942

Great Battles: The Battle of Alamein

More than forty years after his death, Laszlo Almasy's name would become famous in Anthony Minghella's film The English Patient. But who was he really? Was he a spy? If so, for whom-the Allies or the Germans? John Bierman's wide-ranging investigation of Almasy's life and career reveals an even more complex and enigmatic figure than Hollywood allowed.

The Real English Patient

The Secret Life of Laszlo Almasy

Swallowed up by the Soviet prison system, the fate of Raoul Wallenberg, saviour of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Nazi holocaust, remains a mystery. Recently KGB files have been opened and many Communist crimes have been fully exposed. Yet there is still no evidence, apart from a handwritten note of doubtful authenticity, to support the Kremlin's claim that in 1947 Wallenberg, then thirty-five years old, died of a heart attack in prison. On the other hand there is abundant evidence - none of it conclusive, but much of it highly persuasive - that Wallenberg remained alive in captivity long after 1947, broken in body and spirit, somewhere in the vastness of the former Soviet Union. Righteous Gentile is the first book to tell the full story of Raoul Wallenberg's shining wartime exploits and shameful post-war incarceration.

John Bierman

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