On the 28th May, 1943, the author of this book was parachuted, together with Captain Stuart and a small party, to the highlands of Montenegro. These two officers commanded the first British military mission to Tito's headquarters. They landed unawares in the middle of the most critical Axis operation as yet mounted against the Yogoslav partisan movement, whose main forces of four divisions, lightly armed and burdened with three thousand wounded, were encircled on the 'Embattled Mountain' of Durmitor - the symbol of this book - by double their number, headed by German mountain and SS troops, supported by artillery and aircraft. This account of the breaking of the enemy ring is a classic study in partisan war.

'The republication of "The Embattled Mountain" is both welcome and timely. It is welcome because this remains, four decades on, a compelling and important book. It is not only a classic war memoir in the inimitable British tradition - alternately exciting, moving, funny, understated and poetic - but it is also an important historical study of ant-Axis resistance in Yugoslavia during the Second World War and of Britain's engagement with and changing policies towards that resistance.' Mark Wheeler, Professor of History and International Relations at the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology

This famous and important book was first published in 1962. With disarming modesty, the author describes it as 'a book by an Englishman, in part based on German documents, on the fall of the Fascist government in Italy.' It is, but such downbeat words give no idea of the monumental scale of the narrative. In detail, the decline and fall of the Fascist regime in Italy is chronicled leading to the dramatic downfall of Mussolini himself in July, 1943. The narrative then traces Mussolini's return to power as head of the puppet satellite Nazi republic in the North after his abduction from internment by SS paratroopers in September, and then follows the dictator's fate through the final six hundred days of the final disintegration of Fascism. 'The Brutal Friendship massive, impersonal and enthralling, is not only an important contribution to recent history, but an example of how to write it.' John Hale, Sunday Telgraph 'This is a very fine piece of writing and . . . it makes enthralling reading.' Times Literary Supplement

Richard Sorge was a spy, a Russian spy and an extraordinarily successful one. Two quotes illustrate this. The first is by Larry Collins, 'Richard Sorge's brilliant espionage work saved Stalin and the Soviet Union from defeat in the fall of 1941, probably prevented a Nazi victory in World War Two and thereby assured the dimensions of the world we live in today.' The second is by Frederick Forsyth, 'The spies in history who can say from their graves, the information I supplied to my masters, for better or worse, altered the history of our planet, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Richard Sorge was in that group.' Masquerading as a Nazi journalist, Richard Sorge worked undetected as head of a Red Army spy ring until he was arrested and executed in Japan during the Second World War. Such an astonishing story as Sorge's is bound to attract attention but not only was this the first book to offer an authoritative account, it has, in many ways, not least in the quality of its writing, never been superseded. The authors rejected legend and found facts that were even stranger. They provide an account as reliable as it is enthralling of possibly the most successful spy who ever operated; a man who for eight years transmitted from Japan a continuous stream of the most valuable information, often derived from the highest quarters, culminating in precise advance information of Hitler's invasion of Russia, of Japan's decision not to attack Russia in 1941, and of the near certainty of war against America that October or November instead. Jointly written books sometimes jar, but not this one. The authors had complementary skills, F. W. Deakin being an authority on twentieth-century European history and G. R Storry no less of an authority on twentieth-century Japan. Together they do justice to 'the man whom I regard as the most formidable spy in history,' (Ian Fleming).