Tony Geraghty – författare

This text presents the secrets of how British intelligence officers working undercover as liaison officers in East Germany stole advanced Soviet equipment and penetrated top-secret training areas. For 40 years the men from all three armed services, the SAS and the Foreign Office conducted an intelligence war against the massive Soviet military strength.

A full and definitive account of the war waged between Irish Republicans and England over three centuries by the bestselling author of ‘Who Dares Wins’, with emphasis on the latterday role of the special forces.From the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 to the Downing Street Declaration of 1993, Britain and Ireland have been in mortal conflict over the sovereignty of the Emerald Isle. In ‘The Irish War’, bestselling author Tony Geraghty writes a full and compelling account of the tragic three-hundred-year war, tracing the path to today’s weary peace.From his years of reporting the outbreak of the troubles in 1969 for the Sunday Times to the present, Tony Geraghty has covered every bloody twist and turn of the IRA and the Loyalist campaigns, but his unerring eye for detail took him back through the centuries to uncover the roots and causes of the grievances and feuds that have been so ruthlessly fought over in the past twenty-five years. The result is a powerful history of England’s ruthless aggression against her small Catholic neighbour and that tiny island’s utter determination to oust the bullying intruder. After the battles of the Boyne and Aughrim, deserted by the last of their officers and with inferior resources, the Irish reinvented the rules of warfare to their advantage. The battle cry of Sinn Fein – ‘Ourselves Alone’ – went up and a code of fighting that ignored the rules of war was let loose.Tracing the roots and meaning of the terrible war that has been fought overtly and covertly for three hundred years, ‘The Irish War’ is essential reading for all those seeking to understand the relations between these two nations.

A history of the legendary French Foreign Legion by the bestselling author of Who Dares Wins.Tony Geraghty analyses the legend and re-examines the battle honours of the Foreign Legion, and his revelations illuminate the darker side of its historic relationship to the motherland. Called into being in 1831 as a device to absorb the footloose veterans of Napoleon’s old armies, the French Foreign Legion subsequently won astonishing victories in the farflung battlefields of Spain, the Crimea, Algeria and Morrocco, Italy, Mexico, Syria, Indo-China, Madagascar, and West and Central Africa.March or Die also traces the Legion's diminished fortunes in recent years. It has fought in the Gulf War, Rwanda and Kosovo among other conflicts, but has found itself in 'a world of political correctness which left the Legion marooned on an island of admirable but anachronistic values'. Forced to accept women in its ranks and no longer unique now that conscription has been abolished, it is searching for its place in the modern world.

From the origins of the SAS behind Rommel's lines in the Sahara through the Malayan emergency, the Arabian skirmishes in Oman and Yemen, the debacle in Gibraltar and the regiment's unique role in the Gulf War, Tony Geraghty examines their successes and failures, the different ways successive British governments have exploited their expertise, their training methods and the skills the men acquire. He has spoken to the soldiers and officers who took part in the SAS' many operations, gaining insight into their activities, philosophy and morale. The author includes material on the Falklands campaign, the shoot to kill debate and previously unknown facts of the SAS' activity during the Gulf War. He has spoken to those who operated far behind the Iraqi lines and obtained previously unpublished photographs of their presence there. As with the original edition, this is a portrayal of a regiment always on call for the riskier military activities and who occupy a special place in the British Army. Tony Geraghty was the Sunday Times Defence Correspondent during the 1970s.