BEEVOR DOES IT AGAIN
Conveying the hell of battle is traditionally done better on celluloid than in print. Not with Antony Beevor among the shrapnelled corpses and flame-baked ruins. After the compelling brutalism of “Stalingrad” and “Berlin: The Downfall 1945”, Beevor’s fresh assault on the bookshops beaches on more familiar terrain—D-Day. Mixing sniper-vision detail with grand strategic overview, “D-Day: The Battle for Normandy” covers every yard of the Allies’ Norman conquest.
As a military historian Beevor remains tankspotter-in-chief, but readers run little risk of battalion fatigue thanks to his leavening fascination with the psychological impact of warfare. Monty preens, Patton struts, Rommel despairs. gis are baffled when Tommies under fire stop for a brew. Feral Panzer divisions prowl these pages like caged cats. “D-Day” somehow transcends its author’s previous beaverings. Take his all-too-visceral tour of this corner of a foreign field and give thanks that you were not there.
~ JASPER REES
"D-Day: The Battle for Normandy", by Antony Beevor, Viking, out now
Article tools
- Login to post comments
Email this page- Printer-friendly version
Delicious
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Comment of the moment
quote It's often seemed to me that Shakespeare might well have been a simply brilliant editor as well as a beyond-extraordinary writer