Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man - Hardcover

Hugh Sebag-Montefiore is a journalist and the author of Enigma: The Battle for the Code.

Sebag-Montefiore's book is a narrative triumph. I have not read a better account of many modest actions--today forgotten, as all defeats are--in which British soldiers fought painfully and hard, to check the German tide. The author has brought together scores of personal accounts to impressive, moving effect.
--Max Hastings (The Sunday Telegraph 2006-05-21)

The greatest achievement of Hugh Sebag-Montefiore's Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man is the masterly way he brings a wealth of fresh revelation and detail to this most familiar tale, and tells a searing story. It is both meticulous military history and a deeply moving testimony to the extraordinary personal bravery of individual soldiers. By the time he is done, the evacuation of Dunkirk seems more miraculous still...Montefiore's account moves seamlessly from the growing crisis of confidence and eventual cold hostility between the French and British High Command, as the British observed the sobbing generals and disintegration of French morale, to the decisions taken in isolation by soldiers and pilots who recognised from the moment that battle was joined that their tanks and bombers were not adequate to confront the German panzers. Montefiore successfully holds together the geography of the battle, but he is most effective when he evokes the small-scale horror of the fighting, blockhouse by blockhouse, bridge by bridge, village by village and farm by farm.
--Tim Gardam (The Times 2006-05-27)

[Full of] exemplary research and clear-eyed analysis.
--Jonathan Bouquet (The Observer 2006-05-21)

In the chaos and horror that was Dunkirk, there are, of course, any number of compelling human stories, and Montefiore has skilfully interwoven individual tales of heroism and occasional cowardice into his narrative...Several fine books have been written about it, but none better than this.
--Andrew Roberts (Mail on Sunday 2006-06-11)

Sebag-Montefiore tells [the story of Dunkirk] with gusto, a remarkable attention to detail and an inexhaustible appetite for tracking down the evidence. The result can sometimes read like one damn thing after another, but the sense of confusion, anxiety, uncertainty and intrepid courage which characterised this disastrous campaign is captured more successfully than in any other existing account. The strength of Sebag-Montefiore's book rests on the accounts of those who fought. These are poignant in the extreme. There was no shortage of suicidal bravery. Troops at Arras were ordered to "fight to the last man and the last round," and in many cases they did so.
--Richard Overy (Daily Telegraph 2006-05-27)

The evacuation of more than 300,000 troops in one week in May and June 1940 has moved into the realms of myth: "little ships" and the "Dunkirk spirit" have come to stand for the British capacity to turn a disaster into a triumph. Hugh Sebag-Montefiore returns Dunkirk to history, taking in the grand sweep of strategy and numerous examples of individual heroism as entire divisions were sacrificed so that the road to Dunkirk could be kept open as an escape route...Sebag-Montefiore's level of detail, knowledge and compassion [provides] for readable wartime history.
--Campbell Stevenson (The Observer 2006-07-16)

Sebag-Montefiore's book reads like a thriller. With the aid of new material from British and Continental archives, and interviews with the last survivors, he zeroes in on critical moments in the opening battles in northwestern France and the people who planned and executed them...This book is a tour de force.
--Christopher Hudson (Daily Mail 2006-07-21)

Hugh Sebag-Montefiore reveals how the events which have become synonymous with the name of that small French seaside town were not only about the brilliant rescue of the British Army by the Royal Navy and an armada of "little boats." He shows that the evacuation would not have been possible without the amazing tenacity of the British soldiers who remained behind to fight as their comrades retreated to eventual safety.
--Paul Callan (The Express 2006-05-20)

Sebag-Montefiore exploits a gap in the voluminous Dunkirk historiography for this first-rate account of the British troops that stayed behind to protect one of history's most dramatic and timely rescues...Drawing upon exhaustive research, the author portrays rescue in vivid, often harrowing, terms. (starred review) (Publishers Weekly 2006-09-25)

Few accounts [of the Battle of Dunkirk] supply details of the determined defense of the corridor through which the trapped army retreated. Journalist Sebag-Montefiore's book falls into that category and therefore fills an important gap. The author uses a wide variety of new or little-used primary sources, including personal interviews, official reports, and soldiers' unpublished accounts. He ably marshals these sources to create a vivid and gripping description of engagements in which British units, against overwhelming odds, held their positions for precious hours so their comrades could be brought to safety.
--Richard Fraser (Library Journal 2006-11-01)