Author challenges desert campaign

A Newark author has written a book questioning the roles Montgomery and Rommel played in the second world war desert campaign and its defining battle, El Alamein.

In 1942 a demoralised and near-defeated British Army won its first battle against the Germans and turned the tide of the war.

How did the British and Commonwealth forces do it and was Montgomery’s role really as crucial as history tells us asks Bryn Hammond in his book, El Alamein: The Battle That Turned The Tide Of The Second World War.

Drawing on a remarkable array of first-hand accounts, this book reveals the personal experiences of those on the front-line and provides fascinating details of how the war was fought.

It debunks the idea that the desert war was one without hate, questions the actions and reputations of Montgomery and Rommel and puts forward an alternative account of the real factors that led to a decisive Allied victory in a battle that helped to win the war.

Mr Hammond is a member of the British Commission for Military History and completed his doctoral thesis on tank warfare.

He is also an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for War Studies at the University of Birmingham, and the Western Front and Gallipoli Associations.

His previous publication, Cambrai 1917, was extremely well received and he has written widely on a variety of military history subjects in a number of magazine publications.

He works at the Imperial War Museum.