Jonathan Dimbleby

Jonathan Dimbleby's taut account of North African fighting in the Second World War, culminating in the second battle of El Alamein, is a scintillating piece of writing that has fresh things to say about a campaign so much fought over among revisionist historians subsequently, who sum up the Second World War as 'Russia defeated Germany, the United States defeated Japan, and Britain defeated... Italy.'

The force that Hitler sent to prop up his sagging Italian ally, Rommel's Afrika Korps, was among the world's finest. What's more, it
came within an ace of seizing Cairo, severing Britain's links with its Asian empire. For almost two years, beating Rommel became the principal preoccupation of a succession of luckless British generals, urged on by an impatient Churchill.

Two competent commanders – Wavell and Auchinleck – were summarily and unfairly sacked by Churchill for failing to magic up the elusive win over Germany's Desert Fox. The man who eventually did was Montgomery, who
insisted on delaying his counter-attack until he had sufficient troops, tanks, guns and reserves to – as he characteristically put it – 'hit Rommel for six'.

Rommel was sick and absent; his few tanks were short of parts, and his men exhausted by two years of fighting in the inhumanly harsh desert terrain.