Operation Biting

MAX HASTINGS is the author of more than thirty books, many of them about twentieth-century wars, including All Hell Let Loose, Catastrophe, Vietnam and Abyss. In his early years as a correspondent, he reported on eleven conflicts, including Vietnam and the 1973 Yom Kippur and 1982 Falklands wars for BBC TV and newspapers. A former editor-in-chief of the Daily Telegraph, he has won many awards both for his journalism and books, including Journalist of the Year, Reporter of the Year, Editor of the Year, together with a Somerset Maugham Prize and two RUSI Westminster Medals. He contributes to The Times, reviews books for the Sunday Times and writes a column for Bloomberg Inc. He and his wife Penny live in West Berkshire where they garden enthusiastically. He has two very grown-up children and two grandchildren.

EARLY PRAISE FOR OPERATION BITING: 'There are few things in life more dependable than a war story told by Hastings… He’s a master of drama, a writer intimately familiar with the mind of the soldier… The Bruneval operation fell into the lap of Lord Louis Mountbatten, the newly appointed commodore of Combined Operations. Hastings, never one to suffer fools, is wonderfully acerbic, calling Mountbatten an “extreme narcissist” who was attracted to the glory that a successful raid might bring. Hastings is a superb military historian with a delightful talent for gossip… Operation Biting is not a typical war story. War histories are usually studies in failure. So many catastrophic mistakes. So many needless deaths. What a relief then, joy even, to be able to read about a battle with a happy ending and genuine heroes — a day that went well' The Times ‘An important book, and proof that the detailed telling of a small piece of history can illuminate our understanding of a much greater whole. It’s one in a long line of Second World War books written by Hastings in an engaging and entertaining way. Now that almost all the veterans of the conflict are no longer with us, his work is especially valuable: all that remains is the history, and the historians who tell it' Daily Telegraph ''Reads like a thriller’ is often said about good non-fiction accounts of war adventures – but in this case, it’s true. I couldn’t put Max Hastings’s new book down, and I couldn’t even bear to look at the mid-book photographs till I’d finished, in case they gave the story away. Hastings is a top-notch writer, who relishes the eccentric brilliance of British wartime boffins, and who knows exactly when to swoop down from the big story and focus briefly on unforgettable human detail' Daily Mail