This is a unique single-volume history of the road to El Alamein
- 'the end of the beginning'
- & the bloody battle that followed... It was the British victory at the Battle of El Alamein in November 1942 that inspired one of Churchill's most famous aphorisms: 'it is not the end nor is it the beginning of the end but it is the end of the beginning'. & yet the true significance of this iconic episode remains unrecognised. In this thrilling historical account Jonathan Dimbleby describes the political & strategic realities that lay behind the battle charting the nail-biting months that led to the victory at El Alamein in November 1942. It is a story of high drama played out both in the war capitals of London Washington Berlin Rome & Moscow & at the front in the command posts & foxholes in the desert. El Alamein" is about politicians & generals diplomats civil servants & soldiers. It is about forceful characters & the tensions & rivalries between them. Drawing on official records & the personal insights of those involved at every level Dimbleby creates a vivid portrait of a struggle which for Churchill marked the turn of the tide
- & which for the soldiers on the ground involved fighting & dying in a foreign l&."