The Battle of Arnhem

In this book, first published in Christopher Hibbert, one of Britain’s foremost historians, tells the true story of the Battle of Arnhem which was fought in September 1944 on Dutch soil and made famous in the 1977 film A Bridge Too Far.

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