The Greatest Raid
- Author Giles Whittell
- Narrator Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
- Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
- Run Time 8 hours and 18 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Battles and campaigns, Naval forces and warfare, Second World War.
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What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
FROM THE AUTHOR OF BRIDGE OF SPIES: A dramatic and colourful new account of the most daring British commando raid of World War Two
In the darkest months of the Second World War, Churchill approved what seemed to many like a suicide mission. Under orders to attack the St Nazaire U-boat base on the Atlantic seaboard, British commandos undertook "the greatest raid of all", turning an old destroyer into a live bomb and using it to ram the gates of a Nazi stronghold. Five Victoria Crosses were awarded -- more than in any similar operation.
Drawing on official documents, interviews, unknown accounts and the astonished reactions of French civilians and German forces, The Greatest Raid recreates in cinematic detail the hours in which the "Charioteers" fought and died, from Lt Gerard Brett, the curator at the V & A, to "Bertie" Burtinshaw, who went into battle humming There'll Always be an England, and from Lt Stuart Chant, who set the fuses with 90 seconds to escape, to the epic solo reconnaissance of the legendary Times journalist Capt Micky Burn.
Unearthing the untold human stories of Operation Chariot, Bridge of Spies author Giles Whittell reveals it to be a fundamentally misconceived raid whose impact and legacy was secured by astonishing bravery.
© Giles Whittell 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022
Critics Review
-
I loved this book, as I love any good adventure story sublimely told…This book has the same effect as that drug. It’s a gloriously exciting high, followed by a crushing realisation of war’s enormous waste
The Times -
Enthralling . . . the heroism on display that night was unsurpassed, and Whittell is right to call his book The Greatest Raid
Mail on Sunday -
Absorbing . . . The extraordinary bravery of the participants shines out from the narrative
Sunday Telegraph -
A story of extraordinary courage . . . Without Chariot there might have been no further raids such as the much larger, and ultimately disastrous, attack on Dieppe five months later
Spectator -
A compelling page-turner, the work of a master storyteller. The drama of the March 1942 operation is cinematic in its sweep and detail — and Whittell’s detective work on the real reasons for the raid is extraordinary. It is also beautifully written
Matthew d'Ancona -
A spellbinding account of one of the most astonishing episodes of the whole war. Thrilling and tragic in equal measure, it is a story of self-sacrifice, comradeship and courage on an unimaginable scale
Julia Boyd, author of Travellers in the Third Reich
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