Colin Smith - Englands Last War Against France: Fighting Vichy 1940-1942

Praise for Englands Last War Against France

Fills one of the few remaining gaps in Second World War historiography, an excellent account of the almost forgotten struggle between British and Vichy Forces Patrick Bishop, author of Bomber Boys

This well-documented and intriguing history unearths one of the least-known episodes of the Second World War Smiths writing is dispassionate [and] robust, his sources well chosen and well used and his talent for military history self-evident Good Book Guide

Smith describes unfamiliar battles with notable fluency and skill

Sir Max Hastings, Sunday Times

There is much of the flavour of Waughs Sword of Honour trilogy in Smiths delight in arcane detail and rumbustious anecdote

Carmen Calil, Guardian

Battles [recorded] in dramatic detail, using not only official records and personal diaries, but eyewitness accounts from participants Charles Glass (author of Americans in Paris), London Review of Books

Reading Englands Last War Against France, for the military history buff, is rather like finding an episode of a favourite TV show that youve never seen before

bookseller Henry Coningsby, Waterstones, Watford

Colin Smiths light yet detailed touch superbly outlines a wasteful and depressing story A quality read with many political and military twists and turns Soldier Magazine

Timely and thrillingly readable history an important and informative book Nigel Jones, History Today

In this excellent account of a woefully understudied war within a war, Colin Smith has identified no fewer than 14 occasions when Britons and Frenchmen fought each other during the Second World War Andrew Roberts, Literary Review

Hidden gem! [A] quirky take on the well ploughed field of World War Two studies The Oldie

Grim revelations about the thousands of allies killed by troops loyal to Vichy Our Choice of the Best Recent books, Sunday Times

As Colin Smith reveals in this profoundly thought provoking book, from 1940 to 1942 Britain and France were bitter and very bloody enemies Robert Colbeck, Worcester News

Smiths considerable achievement is to unmask the reality and make us understand this painful period far better than ever before

Catholic Herald

Absorbing a fascinating and compelling read

Western Daily Press

A classic on the conflict with Hitlers Vichy allies a superb book on an astonishing array of long-buried incidents Oxford Times

Smith ranks with Antony Beevor and Max Hastings as a great war historian. But whereas Beevor and Hastings concentrate their efforts on the shortcomings, or otherwise, of politicians and military commanders in WWII, Smith forensically dissects the accounts of those who had to face life and death in the frontline of battles. He allows the voices of ordinary men and women to be heard in history. Englands Last War Against France is history from below at its best

C.J. Mitchell, Readers Reviews, amazon.co.uk

Colin Smith, an award-winning foreign correspondent, worked for the Observer for twenty-six years. During that time he reported from many wars and trouble spots ranging from Saigon to Sarajevo. It was in long-suffering Lebanon that an elderly resident of the southern town of Merjeyoun pointed out the artillery scars that the British and the French had left behind and recalled the screams that went with a Senegalese bayonet charge. His books include The Last Crusade, a novel set in Allenbys 1917 Palestine campaign and, most recently, the critically acclaimed Singapore Burning (2005). He lives in Nicosia.

www.colin-smith.info

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