IAN DEAR is an historian with an unusual background in covert warfare. He served in the Royal Marines beofre working in the film and book publishing industries. He became a full time writer in 1979 specializing in military and maritime history and has written a vast number of books on secret operations of the war, including Marines at War, Escape and Evasion and Sabotage and Subversion (both The History Press) and Ten Commando. He spent five years as general editor of The Oxford Companion to World War II and co-edited, with the late Peter Kemp, The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea.