The Battle of Arnhem
About this ebook
Nine thousand men of the First British Airborne Division were parachuted into the peaceful countryside that surrounded Arnhem. Their objective was to capture and hold the bridge over the Rhine ahead of the advancing British Second Army. Nine days later, after some of the fiercest street-fighting of the war, 2,000 paratroopers managed to escape to safety. This is the vivid account of how a brilliant plan turned into an epic tragedy.
‘Alive with the detail that evokes the smoking background’—Daily Telegraph
‘Finely recorded...truly the battle of Arnhem has been fortunate in its historian’—Sunday Times
‘Clear-sighted, well written and scrupulously fair...it deserves to stand with the best of the battle chronicles’—Sunday Telegraph
About the author
Christopher Hibbert (born Arthur Raymond Hibbert) MC (5 March 1924 - 21 December 2008), was an English writer, historian and biographer. He has been called “a pearl of biographers” (New Statesman) and “probably the most widely-read popular historian of our time and undoubtedly one of the most prolific” (The Times).
Born in Enderby, Leicestershire in 1924, the son of Canon H. V. Hibbert (died 1980) and his wife Maude, he was educated at Radley and Oriel College, Oxford. He was awarded the degrees of B.A. and later MA.
During World War II he served as an infantry officer in the London Irish Rifles regiment in Italy, reaching the rank of captain. He was twice wounded and was awarded the Military Cross in 1945.
Described by Professor J. H. Plumb as ‘a writer of the highest ability’, he is, in the words of the times Educational Supplement, ‘perhaps the most gifted popular historian we have’, he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the author of many books, including The Story of England, Disraeli, Edward VII, George IV, The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici, and Cavaliers and Roundheads.
He died in 2008 aged 84.
