From the bestselling author of Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man and Enigma: The Battle for the Code, the story of unsung American heroism in World War II's maritime epic in the Arctic.
Excellent ... Mr. Sebag-Montefiore, who previously wrote about the British retreat at Dunkirk and the efforts to break the Germans’ Enigma code, uses wartime diaries, interviews and newly available archives from Russia, including the Northern Maritime Museum in Arkhangelsk, to focus on 'the officers, armed guards and the ordinary civilian seamen.'
Reading this book is like being battered with hailstones in a fierce storm. The carnage is relentless. Sebag-Montefiore, formerly a barrister, now an accomplished military historian, clearly loves his topic. He has read all the ship’s logs, all the memoirs, all the official reports. He’s interviewed surviving crew members. He gathers all that material together in a mammoth book of more than 800 pages. It’s an impressive accomplishment, but I wish he’d spent more time on editing. Some sentences are clumsy and convoluted; the book itself is unnecessarily long. It will nevertheless appeal to naval history aficionados who don’t mind being pummelled by relentless horror.
A giant and comprehensive history ... Jimmy Campbell, a 15-year-old steward’s boy – and yes, children that age could serve in the Merchant Navy – recalled how, in his lifeboat, one sailor lost his mind and thought he was going 'to the pub to meet his mates'. He 'stepped off' into the sea before anyone could stop him ... Testimonies such as these are the strongest part of Sebag-Montefiore’s book. Meticulously drawn from a range of archival sources, they must have taken years to assemble. The book was originally due for publication some time ago, which makes the author’s sustained commitment and scholarship all the more impressive.
