The cloak-and-dagger war fought by British secret agents against Mussolini's Italy has been little known - until now. Target: Italy is the official history of the efforts of Britain's Special Operations Executive to strike at Fascist Italy in the Second World War and sever its alliance with Nazi Germany. Drawing on declassified documents, it reveals missions as remarkable as a plot to assassinate Mussolini and plans to arm the Mafia, and brings home the risks that secret agencies run when trying to undermine well-entrenched regimes. A powerful tale of desperate daring, tragic sacrifice and long-held wartime secrets.

In 1943, small teams of elite British soldiers began parachuting into the mountains of Axis-occupied Albania. They were members of Britain's Special Operations Executive, and their task was to find and arm bands of local guerillas and harass the Axis as best they could. None had been to Albania before, or knew what awaited them. Trying to survive in extreme conditions and formidable terrain, these young Britons lived in constant danger of capture and death, and were plagued by illness, lice and frostbite. Casualties were appalling and most guerillas keener to kill each other than fight Italians and Germans. In his extraordinary new book, Roderick Bailey draws on interviews with survivors, long-hidden diaries and recently declassified files to tell the full story of this remarkable corner of SOE history and finally settle the question of whether or not British communists in SOE, perhaps even colleagues of the Cambridge spies, had conspired to betray British interests.

A powerful history of the one of the most remarkable days in British military history, told by those who were there.
6 June 1944: Allied forces cross the Channel and begin fighting their way into Nazi-occupied Europe.
"Bullets just came at you like raindrops. You could hear them whistling and passing you and hitting the ground near you but you just kept going on." --Private William Edward Lloyd, 2nd Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment
This is the compelling story of the Normandy Landings told by the paratroopers and commandos who were first on enemy territory, the intelligence officers who planned the assault, the crewmen who piloted the landing craft to the beaches, and the ordinary soldiers who waded ashore under fire.
Codenamed Operation Overlord, D-Day was one of the biggest military operations ever attempted. Planned over three years in the greatest secrecy it involved 3.5 million soldiers, sailors and airmen from all the Allied countries, who all shared the same objective: to liberate Europe from the Nazi occupation. Almost four years to the day since the last of the disordered and defeated British Army was rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk, D-Day may have only been the start of the long fight to Berlin, but it was also the beginning of the end of the long and bloody conflict.
Featuring a mass of previously unpublished material, "Forgotten Voices of D-Day" is a powerful record that tells what it was really like to be involved on that fateful day, which finally and decisively turned the tide of the Second World War.

'The Gestapo kept me three days in this interrogation house. They especially wanted to know what I did after my escape, and precise things on the organisation of the SOE. And just for fun I suspect, because I had really not much to tell them, they pulled one of my toenails out...' - Robert Sheppard, SOE agent The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a secret British organisation created early in World War 2 to encourage resistance and carry out sabotage behind enemy lines: in Winston Churchill's famous phrase, to 'set Europe ablaze'. Drawing on the vast resources of the Imperial War Museum Sound Archive and featuring a mass of previously unpublished personal testimonies, Forgotten Voices of the Secret War tells the stories of SOE agents, HQ staff, diplomats, aircrew and naval personnel in their own words. As the war unfolds, we learn of parachute drops into enemy territory, torture by the Gestapo and nerve-wracking sabotage missions in far-flung climes. Forgotten Voices of the Secret War is both an incredible account of espionage during World War 2 and a fitting testament to the efforts and sacrifices of a dedicated group of courageous men and women.