cover image War Diaries 1939-1945

War Diaries 1939-1945

Alan Brooke. University of California Press, $50 (815pp) ISBN 978-0-520-23301-0

Begun as a substitute for regular conversation on the day's events with his wife, War Diaries 1939-45 records Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke's (1883-1963) service as commander of the doomed corps in France, as head of the evacuation from Dunkirk, and then, beginning in 1941, as Churchill's chief of staff. The diaries inspired Sir Arthur Bryant's The Turn of the Tide (1957) and The Triumph of the West (1959), but are published here for the first time, in an edition carefully edited by Keele University professor of International Relations Alex Danchev, and Pembroke College history research graduate Daniel Todman. ( Aug.)