John Bierman

Following the frightful journey of a brave group of European Jews as they raced to refuge in Israel during World War II, John Bierman tells of the last great escape from Nazi-dominated Europe. With 514 passengers aboard a boat out of Europe, it took four years to for a brave and desperate group of European Jews to reach the sanctuary they longed for. In the final great escape from Nazi-dominated Europe, their journey to escape would bring them face to face with hardships and losses that would push strength and hope to its breaking point. Odyssey shares the thrilling, shocking, and heart-warming story of the Jewish men and women who risked it all for freedom as they embarked on a trip that would take more courage, perseverance, and determination than anything before.

Who was the real 'English patient'? The desert explorer Laszlo Almasy, on whom the character was loosely based, was very different from the romantic hero of the prize-winning novel anmd multiple Oscar-winning movie of that name. But a similar aura of mystery surrounds them both. While the fictional Almasy gave the Germans his desert maps only because he was desperate to keep a promise to his dying mistress, the real-life Almasy worked for Germany military intelligence only because he was desperate for the chance to return to the desert he loved more than anything or anybody else. Or so John Bierman implies in this arresting and carefully-researched biography. Among its many unexpected revelations is that far from being the love of his friend's wife, Almasy was a homosexual with no interest at all in the opposite sex. Nor was he really a count, although he was born into the minor Hungarian nobility. In short, the real-life Almasy remains an enigma. For instance there is good reason to believe that he became a double agent working for both sides in World War II - and compelling evidence that he spied for British intelligence during the Cold War.

'Excellent ... a remarkable achievement and ought to be recognised as one of the most successful histories of the Western Desert and North African fighting yet to have appeared' John Keegan, Daily TelegraphFor the British, the battle fought at El Alamein in October 1942 became the turning point of the Second World War. In this study of the desert war, John Bierman and Colin Smith show why it is remembered by its survivors as a 'war without hate'. Through extensive research the authors provide a compellingly fresh perspective on the see-saw campaign in which the two sides chased each other back and forth across the unforgiving North African landscape.

Swallowed up by the Soviet prison system, the fate of Raoul Wallenberg, saviour of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Nazi holocaust, remains a mystery. Recently KGB files have been opened and many Communist crimes have been fully exposed. Yet there is still no evidence, apart from a handwritten note of doubtful authenticity, to support the Kremlin's claim that in 1947 Wallenberg, then thirty-five years old, died of a heart attack in prison. On the other hand there is abundant evidence - none of it conclusive, but much of it highly persuasive - that Wallenberg remained alive in captivity long after 1947, broken in body and spirit, somewhere in the vastness of the former Soviet Union. Righteous Gentile is the first book to tell the full story of Raoul Wallenberg's shining wartime exploits and shameful post-war incarceration.