The case for appeasement was still being made within the Cabinet up until the evacuation of Dunkirk, as Lord Halifax had a great deal of support for his conciliatory views. Bizarrely, the thing that ultimately counted against him was his title as it was felt the Upper House should not hold sway over the Commons. Where this book excels, though, is in the quality of its eyewitness testimonies. Many books have previously used this technique of threading narrative with the first person but few have found such eloquent speakers. Most eyewitnesses fudge the difficult bits with remarks like, "It was hell". Clayton and Craig's witnesses don't pull their punches. We hear of one Brit who shot a German officer in cold blood and had nightmares for ages afterwards. We hear of the sailor who saw his gunner decapitated. We experience the stench of burnt flesh following the shelling of an ambulance. In short, we are spared nothing. It may not be comfortable reading but you can't ignore it. 60 years after the men and women in these pages fought and died, there's a tendency for the rest of us to take the freedom they gave us for granted. They deserve a better memorial than a slow fading into nothingness. This book ensures they get it. -John Crace A defeated, retreating British Expeditionary Force, the miraculous evacuation at Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the evacuation to America and the Blitz. You couldn't make the story of 1940 dull if you tried. But even the best material has to be threaded into a manageable narrative and Tim Clayton and Phil Craig don't disappoint. Finest Hour is never less than engaging and frequently does rather better. On the jacket blurb, Clayton & Craig seem keen to establish their bona fides as heavyweight historians and claim to have uncovered a "fresh and controversial" account of the political intrigues and betrayals of the period. There's actually nothing really controversial on offer-at least nothing that hasn't been aired elsewhere. If this comes as a disappointment to the authors, it needn't to the reader because we are left with something just as, if not more, valuable, namely an accessible layperson's ride through the political and military manoeuvrings. Clayton and Craig are particularly good at guiding us through the early days of Churchill's premiership. Read most populist accounts and you would imagine that the moment Churchill took office the bulldog spirit took over and we plucky Brits stood resolute. Not so. The case for appeasement was still being made within the Cabinet up until the evacuation of Dunkirk, as Lord Halifax had a great deal of support for his conciliatory views. Bizarrely, the thing that ultimately counted against him was his title as it was felt the Upper House should not hold sway over the Commons. Where this book excels, though, is in the quality of its eyewitness testimonies. Many books have previously used this technique of threading narrative with the first person but few have found such eloquent speakers. Most eyewitnesses fudge the difficult bits with remarks like, "It was hell". Clayton and Craig's witnesses don't pull their punches. We hear of one Brit who shot a German officer in cold blood and had nightmares for ages afterwards. We hear of the sailor who saw his gunner decapitated. We experience the stench of burnt flesh following the shelling of an ambulance. In short, we are spared nothing. It may not be comfortable reading but you can't ignore it. 60 years after the men and women in these pages fought and died, there's a tendency for the rest of us to take the freedom they gave us for granted. They deserve a better memorial than a slow fading into nothingness. This book ensures they get it. -John Crace.

Of course, there is now, and it comes from one of the bits of empire to which so many undesirables were exported: Whinging Pom. -Robin Davidson.

) Others were so convincing that their descendants still have supporters today. "Karl Wilhelm Naundorff" persisted with his claim to his deathbed and beyond. His gravestone boldly states that he was the son of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. In the second half of her book, Cadbury turns from the sad narrative of Louis the Seventeenth's apparently short life to the mystery of his claimed survival. Finally her book becomes a scientific detective story as the tools of modern DNA testing are used to pinpoint the identity of the boy who died in prison and to investigate the genetic make-up of Naundorff. As both the story of a tragic and short life and a record of how science solved one of the greatest puzzles in French history, The Lost King of France works brilliantly. -Nick Rennison.

An impressive debut, in every sense. -David Vincent.