The Battle of Arnhem is one of the best-known stories in British military history: a daring but thwarted attempt to secure a vital bridgehead across the Rhine in order to end the war before Christmas. It is always written about, with the benefit of unerring 20/20 hindsight, as being doomed to fail, but the men who fought there, men of military legend, didn’t know that that was to be their fate.

By focusing on the events of one day as they happened through the eyes of the British participants and without bringing any knowledge of what would happen tomorrow to bear, Al Murray offers a very different perspective to 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 with Arnhem, and brings 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.