Sword
D-Day - Trial by Battle
Published on 8. May 2025
Book
Hardback
400 pages
978-0-00-869975-8 (ISBN)
Description
'The messy, dirty, bloody reality of Operation Overlord comes alive in Sword, Hastings's portrait of the individual soldiers who risked their lives on the beaches of Normandy. He brings these men to life with sensitivity and beautiful prose' THE TIMES
On 6 June 1944 when the Allied armies landed on D-Day, the Second World War had already lasted almost five years. Yet many of the British and American troops who invaded Normandy were virgin soldiers, never before committed to battle. They quit England in summertime to face within hours a storm of machine-gun and mortar fire. They witnessed scenes, above all of sudden death, such as no exercise had prepared them for.
In Sword, veteran chronicler of war Max Hastings explores with extraordinary vividness the actions of the Commando brigade and Montgomery's 3rd Infantry and 6th Airborne divisions on and around a single beach. He describes their frustrations, hopes, loves and fears through the apparently interminable years training and preparing in England, then their triumphs and tragedies on the beach and beyond. Here are the airborne assaults on the Caen Canal bridge and Merville Battery, the battles on the shoreline and against the German strongpoints inland, narrated and explained with all the insights that Hastings' decades of study, veterans' interviews and new archive research enable him to deploy.
The book offers a searching analysis of why British troops did not reach Caen on 6 June, as Montgomery had promised Churchill that they would - and the story of the brigadier who was sacked for that failure. There is also a host of personal portraits of key figures from Commando leader Lord Lovat, famously brave but supremely arrogant, to Colonel Jim Eadie, whose tanks of the Staffordshire Yeomanry repulsed a panzer division in the last hours of 6 June, and some of the humbler participants to whom extraordinary things happened.
This is the story of D-Day as you have never read it before, with the blend of narrative, analysis and human insight that made Max Hastings' last book Operation Biting, like many of his earlier works, a Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller.
On 6 June 1944 when the Allied armies landed on D-Day, the Second World War had already lasted almost five years. Yet many of the British and American troops who invaded Normandy were virgin soldiers, never before committed to battle. They quit England in summertime to face within hours a storm of machine-gun and mortar fire. They witnessed scenes, above all of sudden death, such as no exercise had prepared them for.
In Sword, veteran chronicler of war Max Hastings explores with extraordinary vividness the actions of the Commando brigade and Montgomery's 3rd Infantry and 6th Airborne divisions on and around a single beach. He describes their frustrations, hopes, loves and fears through the apparently interminable years training and preparing in England, then their triumphs and tragedies on the beach and beyond. Here are the airborne assaults on the Caen Canal bridge and Merville Battery, the battles on the shoreline and against the German strongpoints inland, narrated and explained with all the insights that Hastings' decades of study, veterans' interviews and new archive research enable him to deploy.
The book offers a searching analysis of why British troops did not reach Caen on 6 June, as Montgomery had promised Churchill that they would - and the story of the brigadier who was sacked for that failure. There is also a host of personal portraits of key figures from Commando leader Lord Lovat, famously brave but supremely arrogant, to Colonel Jim Eadie, whose tanks of the Staffordshire Yeomanry repulsed a panzer division in the last hours of 6 June, and some of the humbler participants to whom extraordinary things happened.
This is the story of D-Day as you have never read it before, with the blend of narrative, analysis and human insight that made Max Hastings' last book Operation Biting, like many of his earlier works, a Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller.
Reviews / Votes
EARLY PRAISE FOR SWORD:'The messy, dirty, bloody reality of Operation Overlord comes alive in Sword, Hastings's portrait of the individual soldiers who risked their lives on the beaches of Normandy. He brings these men to life with sensitivity and beautiful prose'
The Times
'The transporting of 150,000 troops across the Channel in total secrecy and the feats they did that day is a story we never tire of - and Max Hastings tells it exceedingly well. His is one of the most reliable brands in popular history and Sword meets his usual standards. A cracking tale in the hands of a practised storyteller'
Spectator
'D-Day was one of the British army's finest hours, perhaps the finest. The author has matched that hour admirably'
Country Life
PRAISE FOR OPERATION BITING:
'There are few things in life more dependable than a war story told by Hastings... He's a master of drama, a writer intimately familiar with the mind of the soldier'
The Times
'An important book, and proof that the detailed telling of a small piece of history can illuminate our understanding of a much greater whole. It's one in a long line of Second World War books written by Hastings in an engaging and entertaining way. Now that almost all the veterans of the conflict are no longer with us, his work is especially valuable: all that remains is the history, and the historians who tell it'
Daily Telegraph
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
HarperCollins Publishers
Dimensions
Height: 239 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 37 mm
Weight
672 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-00-869975-8 (9780008699758)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
05/2026
William Collins
€14.00
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
MAX HASTINGS is the author of over thirty books, most about conflict, and between 1986 and 2002 served as editor-in-chief of the Daily Telegraph, then editor of the Evening Standard. He has won many prizes both for journalism and his books, of which the most recent are Chastise, Operation Pedestal and Abyss, bestsellers translated around the world. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Honorary Fellow of King ' s College, London and was knighted in 2002. He has two grown-up children, Charlotte and Harry, and lives with his wife Penny in West Berkshire, where they garden enthusiastically.