Arnhem: Black Tuesday

The Battle of Arnhem is one of the best-known stories in British military history: a daring but doomed attempt to secure a vital bridgehead across the Rhine in order to end the war before Christmas 1944.

It is always written about, with the benefit of unerring 20/20 hindsight, as being destined to fail, but the men who fought there, men of military legend, didn't know that that was to be their fate.

Now, in Arnhem: Black Tuesday, Al Murray focuses on the events of one day as they happened through the eyes of the British participants, without bringing any knowledge of what would happen tomorrow to bear, offering a very different perspective on a familiar narrative.

Some things went right and a great many more went wrong, but recounting them in this way allows the reader to understand for the first time how certain decisions were taken in the moment and how opportunities were squandered.

Al Murray has always been obsessed by this legendary battle, and in Arnhem: Black Tuesday he showcases all of his knowledge, interpretation and enthusiasm to bear to tell the story of one of history’s great heroic failures differently for the first time.