Sicily '43
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  • Published: 17 August 2021
  • ISBN: 9780552176903
  • Imprint: Corgi
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 784
  • RRP: $22.99
Categories:

Sicily '43

A Times Book of the Year

Formats & editions
Paperback
17 Aug 2021
EBook
3 Sep 2020
Audiobook
3 Sep 2020
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From the bestselling author of Normandy '44, containing new and unpublished research, this is the largely untold story of the critical campaign that became a vital precursor to D-Day.

'James Holland is the best of the new generation of WW2 historians.' Sebastian Faulks
'Holland's skill lies in bringing these warriors to life with vivid prose.' The Times
Shortlisted for the 2021 British Army Military Book of the Year
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This is the story of the biggest seaborne landing in history.

Codenamed Operation HUSKY, the assault on Sicily on 10 July 1943 remains the largest amphibious invasion ever mounted. That day, over 160,000 Allied troops were dropped from the sky or came ashore to begin the fight for Europe.

The subsequent thirty-eight-day Battle for Sicily was one of the most dramatic of the entire war, involving daring raids by special forces, deals with the Mafia, attacks across mosquito-infested plains and perilous assaults up almost sheer faces of rock and scree.

Made worse by virulent disease and extreme heat, the Allies also had to fight their way across an island of unforgiving landscape and limited infrastructure against a German foe who would not give up.
Victory would signal the beginning of the end of the War in the West. From here on, the noose began to tighten around the neck of Nazi Germany. The coalition between the United States and Britain finally came of age. And it was a crucial dry run for Operation OVERLORD, the invasion of Normandy on D-Day a year later.
  • Published: 17 August 2021
  • ISBN: 9780552176903
  • Imprint: Corgi
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 784
  • RRP: $22.99
Categories:

About the author

James Holland

James Holland is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning historian, writer, and broadcaster. The author of a number of best-selling histories including Battle of Britain, Dam Busters, Burma ’44 and, most recently, Big Week, he has also written nine works of historical fiction, including the Jack Tanner novels.

He is currently writing an acclaimed three-volume new history of the Second World War, The War in the West. He has presented – and written – many television programmes and series for the BBC, Channel 4, National Geographic, History and Discovery Channels.

He is also co-founder of the Chalke Valley History Festival and co-founder of WarGen.org, an online Second World War resource site, and presents the Chalk Valley History Hit podcast. A fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he also has a weekly podcast with Al Murray, We Have Ways of Making You Talk: Al Murray and James Holland Talk World War II. He can be found on Twitter as @James1940.

portrait photo of James Holland

Also by James Holland

Cassino '44
Normandy ‘44
The Savage Storm
Big Week
Victory '45
Alvesdon
The Second World War
See all

Praise for Sicily '43

Marshalling a wealth of primary and secondary sources into an engrossing narrative, Holland fills a yawning gap in histories of WWII. This magisterial account is a must-read for military history fans.

Publishers Weekly

Perfect territory for a military historian of Holland's talents

The Times

Historians too often neglect that emotional tapestry. War is characterised as arrows on a map, tables of munitions, cold casualty statistics. Holland's skill lies in bringing these warriors to life with vivid prose. He's a prolific historian of the war, but each book is constructed with great care and emotional commitment...Holland is obsessed with war, but fortunately does not seem to love it. He recognises its beauty, but also its vileness

The Times

Holland argues very effectively that the success of Husky was a turning point in the war

Times Literary Supplement

Holland makes the capture of the island one of the great turning-point battles of the war

Military History Matters

James Holland delivers the account in his usual engaging style and supplements it with excellent pictures and maps

Soldier Magazine

Revelatory

BBC History Extra

Brilliantly blending his historical fact with vivid personal testimony by participants, Holland makes a persuasive case for the conquest of Sicily as a turning-point in the war

Daily Mail