PenguinReaders' Group
 

Editors' Choice

By Stuart Proffitt, Publishing Director, Allen Lane

Masters and Commanders

Masters and Commanders by Andrew Roberts

Masters and Commanders is one of the most thrilling history books I have ever been involved with. Who would have thought there was much new or exciting to say about the decision-making process amongst the Allied high command during the Second World War? But it turns out that there is - partly documentary (Roberts draws on many unpublished memoirs of those involved, and the verbatim records of the British War Cabinet, for the first time) and partly in the interaction of the great principle figures, Roosevelt, Churchill, Marshall and Alan Brooke, which Roberts follows on an almost daily basis and brings alive better than any historian before him. As a result, we truly understand the tensions behind the evolution of Allied grand strategy, and how much relied on the individuals who are at the centre of the story. Roberts tells it in a wonderfully dramatic and vivid way, with lots of little sidelights which reveal the nature of the personalities he is writing about. It is both original and gripping: what more could one ask from any history book?

» Read more