Description

"Prodigious tension.... Reads like a thriller.'
The Times

"Readable, exciting and often moving."
Living History
"A double triumph of gripping story and sensitive celebration."
Times Literary Supplement

"Terrific reading: an utterly absorbing account."
BBC History

The allied landings in Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944, constituted the largest seaborne assault in history and changed both the course of the Second World War and the century.

While its story has been told many times before, this is the first to reveal the role that human error, political infighting, deception, and double agents played in the crucial ten days leading up to the invasion.

Based primarily on unpublished diaries and letters and written with the pace of a thriller, it tells the story through the eyes of ten individuals caught up in the drama: men and women, civilians and soldiers, secret agents, and political prisoners.

None knows if the landings will succeed, and the book describes in gripping detail the suspenseful preparations they make during the excruciating wait for the day that could have taken a fatefully different turn.