Operation Sea Lion by Peter Fleming

Operation Sea Lion - An account of the German preparations and the British counter-measures

Picked this up from Oxfam Books the other day while in search of a Divine Advert Calendar - which btw they didn't have :(

This book had 2 layers of interest - first the raw subject matter and second, as it was first published 1957, the presentation of the events to a very different generation and audience then the contemporary reader.  I do find that reading, what I call, 'historical histories' a particularly enjoyable way to access accounts of the past.  How is the retelling of the events influenced by the time it was written within - for example the majority of those who must have read this account when first published would have lived through the summer of 1940 that it recalls and so would to greater or lesser extents have been involved.

Also it is no great 'myth buster' of a history - which seems to be the only way to get historical subject matter published today (if there isn't a scandal and a reputation to be trasted the contemporary reader is we must assume not interested) - and it gently builds the small details into a narrative that explains not just the outcome of that phase of the war but of the whole war.

I am sure that many of the details firmly asserted by Fleming will now be subject to question or outright rejection as greater access to documents that would have still be classified in the 1950s has been possible, and few writers today would give such a strong part to the differing national characters for fear of straying to racial stereotyping - but as long as you read it as one account rather than the account these thingss do no fatal harm to the integrity of a book that gives an accessible and entertaining insight to a period of time that deserves our attention given that it is so widely hailed as our finest hour.