Le 22 février 1960, à l'âge de dix-neuf ans, Simon Murray pousse les portes du fort de Vincennes pour s'engager dans la Légion étrangère. L'Aventure commence : l'embarquement à Marseille, l'arrivée en Algérie, à Sidi bel-Abbès, les longs mois d'instruction, l'affectation au 2e régiment étranger de parachutistes, la guerre et la traque des fellaghas de la frontière marocaine à la frontière tunisienne, les Aurès, le putsh avorté de 1961, les accords d'Evian, la lente et difficile adaptation au temps de paix...
Durant ses cinq années de service, Murray consigne dans ses carnets de bord son expérience quotidienne de la rude vie de légionnaire, l'entraînement, les marches sans fin et les échaufourées avec les fellaghas dans les montagnes de l'Atlas. La force du récit tient à la personnalité atypique de son auteur. Issu d'un milieu bourgeois, formé dans une vénérable école britannique, il s'enorguellit de servir dans une unité légendaire. Telle est la vertu première de ce journal de guerre unique en son genre : il dit la vérité, toute la vérité et permet de comprendre l'organisation et les motivations de cette troupe à nulle autre pareille.
Un témoignage essentiel sur la guerre d'Algérie comme sur le quotidien des "hommes sans nom" qui composent la Légion étrangère.
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Stalingrad est sans doute le tournant capital de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Sa chute aurait livré à Hitler les pétroles du Caucase. Et quel symbole que de prendre la ville qui portait le nom du « petit père des peuples »... De ces enjeux résulta un des plus gigantesques - et des plus atroces - affrontements militaires de l'Histoire. La Wehrmacht en ressortit brisée ; l'Armée rouge y forgea la légende d'un communisme libérateur.
Pour conter cette épopée, où l'héroïsme et la barbarie se côtoient à chaque page, l'historien britannique Antony Beevor a pu accéder, le premier, aux archives soviétiques, jalousement tenues secrètes jusqu'à la chute du régime, qu'il a confrontées aux archives allemandes ainsi qu'à d'innombrables témoignages.
Opérations militaires, relations entre les hauts gradés et le pouvoir politique, souffrances quotidiennes des combattants des deux bords et des civils : à tous les niveaux, ce récit rigoureux et inspiré apporte des révélations et des éclairages nouveaux. Il nous fait revivre au jour le jour une bataille où se joua le sort du monde. Lire la suite Fermer

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.
''Opportunities multiply as they are seized.'' Written in the 6th century BC, Sun Tzu''s The Art of War is a Chinese military treatise that is still revered today as the ultimate commentary on war and military strategy. Focussing on the principle that one can outsmart your foe mentally by thinking very carefully about strategy before resorting to physical battle, this philosophy continues to be applied to the corporate and business world.
Sun Tzu''s timeless appraisal of the different aspects of warfare are laid out in 13 chapters, including sections on ''Laying Plans'', ''Waging War'' and ''Terrain''. Words that are as resonant today in every aspect of our lives as they were when he wrote them.
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The incredible story of the greatest female spy in history, from one of Britain''s most acclaimed historians - available for pre-order nowIn a quiet English village in 1942, an elegant housewife emerged from her cottage to go on her usual bike ride. A devoted wife and mother-of-three, the woman known to her neighbours as Mrs Burton seemed to epitomise rural British domesticity.However, rather than pedalling towards the shops with her ration book, she was racing through the Oxfordshire countryside to gather scientific intelligence from one of the country''s most brilliant nuclear physicists. Secrets that she would transmit to Soviet intelligence headquarters via the radio transmitter she was hiding in her outdoor privy.Far from a British housewife, ''Mrs Burton'' - born Ursula Kuczynski, and codenamed ''Sonya'' - was a German Jew, a dedicated communist, a colonel in Russia''s Red Army, and a highly-trained spy. From planning an assassination attempt on Hitler in Switzerland, to spying on the Japanese in Manchuria, and helping the Soviet Union build the atom bomb, Sonya conducted some of the most dangerous espionage operations of the twentieth century. Her story has never been told - until now.Agent Sonya is the exhilarating account of one woman''s life; a life that encompasses the rise and fall of communism itself, and altered the course of history.''Macintyre does true-life espionage better than anyone else'' John Preston>
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*Shortlisted for the 2018 Ballie Gifford Prize* 'THE BEST TRUE SPY STORY I HAVE EVER READ' JOHN LE CARR e A thrilling Cold War story about a KGB double agent, by one of Britain's greatest historians On a warm July evening in 1985, a middle-aged man stood on the pavement of a busy avenue in the heart of Moscow, holding a plastic carrier bag. In his grey suit and tie, he looked like any other Soviet citizen. The bag alone was mildly conspicuous, printed with the red logo of Safeway, the British supermarket. The man was a spy. A senior KGB officer, for more than a decade he had supplied his British spymasters with a stream of priceless secrets from deep within the Soviet intelligence machine. No spy had done more to damage the KGB. The Safeway bag was a signal: to activate his escape plan to be smuggled out of Soviet Russia. So began one of the boldest and most extraordinary episodes in the history of spying. Ben Macintyre reveals a tale of espionage, betrayal and raw courage that changed the course of the Cold War forever...
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A SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLERbr>br>''The best single-volume account of the Barbarossa campaign to date'' Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill: Walking with Destinybr>br>''A page-turning descent into Hell and back . . . this fresh and compelling account of Hitler''s failed invasion of the Soviet Union should be on everyone''s reading list for 2021'' Dr Amanda Foreman, author of A World on Firebr>_______________________________br>br>The largest military operation in history. The turning point of the Second World War. The most important year of the twentieth century.br>br>Operation Barbarossa, Hitler''s invasion of Russia in June 1941, aimed at nothing less than a war of extermination to annihilate Soviet communism, liquidate the Jews and create Lebensraum for the German master race. But it led to the destruction of the Third Reich, and was cataclysmic for Germany with millions of men killed, wounded or registered as missing in action. It was this colossal mistake -- rather than any action in Western Europe -- that lost Hitler the Second World War.br>br>Drawing on hitherto unseen archival material, including previously untranslated Russian sources, Jonathan Dimbleby puts Barbarossa in its proper place in history for the first time. From its origins in the ashes of the First World War to its impact on post-war Europe, and covering the military, political and diplomatic story from all sides, he paints a full and vivid picture of this monumental campaign whose full nature and impact has remained unexplored.br>br>Written with authority and humanity, Barbarossa is a masterwork that transforms our understanding of the Second World War and of the twentieth century.br>_______________________________br>br>''Superb. . . stays with you long after you have finished'' Henry Hemming, bestselling author of Our Man in New Yorkbr>br>''A chilling account of war at its worst'' Bear Grylls> Lire la suite Fermer

David Omand was the first UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator, responsible to the Prime Minister for the professional health of the intelligence community, national counter-terrorism strategy and "homeland security". He served for seven years on the Joint Intelligence Committee. He was Permanent Secretary of the Home Office from 1997 to 2000, and before that Director of GCHQ.>

The Normandy Landings that took place on D-Day involved by far the largest invasion fleet ever known. The scale of the undertaking was simply awesome. What followed them was some of the most cunning and ferocious fighting of the war, at times as savage as anything seen on the Eastern Front.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ''John le Carre demystified the intelligence services; Higgins has demystified intelligence gathering itself'' Financial Times ''Uplifting . . . Riveting . . . What will fire people through these pages, gripped, is the focused, and extraordinary, investigations that Bellingcat runs . . . Each runs as if the concluding chapter of a Holmesian whodunit'' Telegraph ''We Are Bellingcat is Higgins''s gripping account of how he reinvented reporting for the internet age . . . A manifesto for optimism in a dark age'' Luke Harding, Observer How did a collective of self-taught internet sleuths end up solving some of the biggest crimes of our time?

Bellingcat, the home-grown investigative unit, is redefining the way we think about news, politics and the digital future. Here, their founder - a high-school dropout on a kitchen laptop - tells the story of how they created a whole new category of information-gathering, galvanising citizen journalists across the globe to expose war crimes and pick apart disinformation, using just their computers.

From the downing of Malaysia Flight 17 over the Ukraine to the sourcing of weapons in the Syrian Civil War and the identification of the Salisbury poisoners, We Are Bellingcat digs deep into some of Bellingcat''s most successful investigations. It explores the most cutting-edge tools for analysing data, from virtual-reality software that can build photorealistic 3D models of a crime scene, to apps that can identify exactly what time of day a photograph was taken.

In our age of uncertain truths, Bellingcat is what the world needs right now - an intelligence agency by the people, for the people.>
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'A superb, unique, and unforgettable story of war and death, fear and cruelty, above all the horrors and allure of combat' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'One of the most profound books I have ever read about the real nature of war and the abstract allure of the ideas and the bloodshed that fuels it' Jon Lee Anderson, author of The Fall of Baghdad An astonishing account of the nature of war from acclaimed novelist and decorated former US marine Elliot Ackerman In a refugee camp in southern Turkey, Elliot Ackerman sits across the table from Abu Hassar, who fought for Al Qaeda in Iraq and has murky connections to the Islamic State. At first, Ackerman pretends to have been a journalist during the Iraq War, but after he establishes a rapport with Abu Hassar, he reveals that in fact he was a Marine. The two men then compare their fighting experiences in the Middle East, discovering they had shadowed each other for some time: a realisation that brings them to a strange kind of intimacy. Elliot Ackerman's extraordinary memoir explores the events that led him to come to this refugee camp and what, unable to forget his time in battle, he hoped to find there. Moving between his recent time on the ground as a journalist in Syria and his Marine deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, he creates a work of astonishing atmospheric pressure, one which blends the American experience with the perspectives and stories of the Arab world, and draws a line between them. At once an intensely personal book about the terrible lure of combat and a brilliant meditation on the meaning of the past two decades of strife for the region and the world, Places and Names bids to take its place among our greatest books about modern war. Lire la suite Fermer

For the first time ever, New York Times bestselling author and former CIA operative Robert Baer tells the explosive story of how insiders believe a KGB mole rose to the highest ranks of the CIA. In the aftermath of the Cold War, US intelligence caught three high-profile Russian spies. However, these arrests left major questions unanswered, and rumours have long swirled of another mole, often referred to as the Fourth Man. Three pioneering female veterans of counterintelligence were tasked with unearthing him. With steadfast determination and expertise, they came to a shocking conclusion, one which had, and continues to harbour, dramatic consequences for American security. In this gripping insider account, Baer tells a thrilling story of Russian espionage and American intelligence. With profound implications for the rise of Vladimir Putin and international relations with Russia, The Fourth Man is a real-life spy thriller with echoes of John Le Carre. Lire la suite Fermer

A magisterial, single-volume history of the greatest conflict the world has ever known by our foremost military historian.

The Sunday Times #1 Bestseller The great airborne battle for the bridges in 1944 by Britain's Number One bestselling historian and author of the classic Stalingrad ' Our greatest chronicler of the Second World War . . . his fans will love it ' - Robert Fox, Evening Standard 'The eye for telling detail which we have come to expect from Antony Beevor. . . this time, though, he turns his brilliance as a military historian to a subject not just of defeat, but dunderhead stupidity' Daily Mail On 17 September 1944, General Kurt Student, the founder of Nazi Germany's parachute forces, heard the growing roar of aeroplane engines. He went out on to his balcony above the flat landscape of southern Holland to watch the air armada of Dakotas and gliders carrying the British 1st Airborne and the American 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions. He gazed up in envy at this massive demonstration of paratroop power. Operation Market Garden, the plan to end the war by capturing the bridges leading to the Lower Rhine and beyond, was a bold concept: the Americans thought it unusually bold for Field Marshal Montgomery. But could it ever have worked? The cost of failure was horrendous, above all for the Dutch, who risked everything to help. German reprisals were pitiless and cruel, and lasted until the end of the war. The British fascination with heroic failure has clouded the story of Arnhem in myths. Antony Beevor, using often overlooked sources from Dutch, British, American, Polish and German archives, has reconstructed the terrible reality of the fighting, which General Student himself called 'The Last German Victory'. Yet this book, written in Beevor's inimitable and gripping narrative style, is about much more than a single, dramatic battle. It looks into the very heart of war. ' In Beevor's hands, Arnhem becomes a study of national character ' - Ben Macintyre, The Times ' Superb book, tirelessly researched and beautifully written ' - Saul David, Daily Telegraph ' Complete mastery of both the story and the sources ' - Keith Lowe, Literary Review ' Another masterwork from the most feted military historian of our time ' - Jay Elwes, Prospect Magazine ' The analysis he has produced of the disaster is forensic ' - Giles Milton, Sunday Times ' He is a master of his craft . . . we have here a definitive account ' - Piers Paul Read, The Tablet
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In February 1945 the Allies obliterated Dresden, the 'Florence of the Elbe'. Explosive bombs weighing over 1,000 lbs fell every seven and a half seconds and an estimated 25,000 people were killed. Was Dresden a legitimate military target or was the bombing a last act of atavistic mass murder in a war already won? From the history of the city to the attack itself, conveyed in a minute-by-minute account from the first of the flares to the flames reaching almost a mile high - the wind so searingly hot that the lungs of those in its path were instantly scorched - through the eerie period of reconstruction, bestselling author Sinclair McKay creates a vast canvas and brings it alive with touching human detail. Along the way we encounter, among many others across the city, a Jewish woman who thought the English bombs had been sent from heaven, novelist Kurt Vonnegut who wrote that the smouldering landscape was like walking on the surface of the moon, and 15-year-old Winfried Bielss, who, having spent the evening ushering refugees, wanted to get home to his stamp collection. He was not to know that there was not enough time. Impeccably researched and deeply moving, McKay uses never-before-seen sources to relate the untold stories of civilians and vividly conveys the texture of contemporary life. Dresden is invoked as a byword for the illimitable cruelties of war, but with the distance of time, it is now possible to approach this subject with a much clearer gaze, and with a keener interest in the sorts of lives that ordinary people lived and lost, or tried to rebuild. Writing with warmth and colour about morality in war, the instinct for survival, the gravity of mass destruction and the manipulation of memory, this is a master historian at work. 'Churchill said that if bombing cities was justified, it was always repugnant. Sinclair McKay has written a shrewd, humane and balanced account of this most controversial target of the Anglo-American strategic bombing campaign, the ferocious consequence of the scourge of Nazism' Allan Mallinson, author of Fight to the Finish 'Beautifully-crafted, elegiac, compelling - Dresden delivers with a dark intensity and incisive compassion rarely equalled. Authentic and authoritative, a masterpiece of its genre' Damien Lewis, author of Zero Six Bravo 'Compelling . . . Sinclair McKay brings a dark subject vividly to life' Keith Lowe, author of Savage Continent 'This is a brilliantly clear, and fair, account of one of the most notorious and destructive raids in the history aerial warfare. From planning to execution, the story is told by crucial participants - and the victims who suffered so cruelly on the ground from the attack itself and its aftermath' Robert Fox, author of We Were There
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The most prestigious and influential book on strategy and dealing with conflict, beautifully translated for clear, accessible reading. In the words of Sun Tzu, "To win without fighting is best." This timeless Chinese classic captures the essence of military strategy used in ancient East Asia, with lessons on how to handle conflict confidently, efficiently, and successfully. The techniques and instructions discussed in The Art of War apply to competition and conflict on every level, from the interpersonal to the international. Its aim is invincibility, victory without battle, and unassailable strength through an understanding of the physics, politics, and psychology of conflict. Thomas Cleary's translation is a breakthrough achievement that has been a gold standard among translations for three decades, offering the complete text in eminently readable prose with short commentaries by other ancient Chinese strategists and philosophers interwoven throughout.
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A masterpiece. It puts all previous single-volume works of the conflict in the shade'' Saul David, The Timesbr>br> ''This book is Richard Overy''s magnum opus ... It would be difficult to overstate the brilliance with which argument and insight are interwoven in a fast-paced narrative'' John Darwin, Times Literary Supplementbr>br> A bold new approach to the Second World War from one of Britain''s foremost military historiansbr>br> Richard Overy sets out in Blood and Ruins to recast the way in which we view the Second World War and its origins and aftermath. He argues that this was the ''great imperial war'', a violent end to almost a century of global imperial expansion which reached its peak in the ambitions of Italy, Germany and Japan in the 1930s and early 1940s, before descending into the largest and costliest war in human history and the end, after 1945, of all territorial empires.br>br> How war on a huge scale was fought, supplied, paid for, supported by mass mobilization and morally justified forms the heart of this new account. Above all, Overy explains the bitter cost for those involved in fighting, and the exceptional level of crime and atrocity that marked these imperial projects, the war and its aftermath. This war was as deadly for civilians as it was for the military, a war to the death over the future of the global order.br>br> Blood and Ruins is a masterpiece from of one of the most renowned historians of the Second World War, which will compel us to view the war in novel and unfamiliar ways. Thought-provoking, original and challenging, Blood and Ruins sets out to understand the war anew.> Lire la suite Fermer

B>A powerful and revelatory eyewitness account of the American collapse in Afghanistan, its desperate endgame, and the wars echoing legacy/b>br>br>Elliot Ackerman left the American military ten years ago, but his time in Afghanistan and Iraq with the Marines and, later, as a CIA paramilitary officer marked him indelibly.;When the Taliban began to close in on Kabul in August of 2021 and the Afghan regime began its death spiral, he found himself pulled back into the conflict. Afghan nationals who had, for years, worked closely with the American military and intelligence communities now faced brutal reprisal and sought frantically to flee the country with their families. The official US government evacuation process was a bureaucratic failure that led to a humanitarian catastrophe. With his former colleagues and friends, protecting the airport in Kabul, Ackerman was drawn into an impromptu effort alongside a group of journalists and other veterans to arrange flights and negotiate with both Taliban and American forces to secure the safe evacuation of hundreds.;These were desperate measures taken during a desperate end to America''s longest war, but the success the group achieved afforded a degree of redemption. And, for Ackerman, a chance to reconcile his past with his present.br>;br>The Fifth Act is an astonishing human document that brings the weight of twenty years of war to bear on a single week, at the conflict''s bitter end. Using the dramatic rescue efforts in Kabul as his lattice, Ackerman weaves in a personal history of the war''s long progress, beginning with the initial invasion in the months after 9/11. It is a play in five acts, the fifth act being the storys tragic denouement, a prelude to Afghanistan''s dark future.;Any reader who wants to understand what went wrong with the wars trajectory will find a trenchant accounting here. And yet The Fifth Act is not an exercise in;finger-pointing: it brings readers into close contact with a remarkable group of characters, American and Afghan, who fought the war with courage and dedication, in good faith and at great personal cost.;Understanding combatants experiences and sacrifices while reckoning with the complex bottom line of the post-9/11 wars is not an easy balance; it demands reservoirs of wisdom and the gifts of an extraordinary storyteller. It asks for an author willing to grapple with certain hard-earned truths. In Elliot Ackerman, this story has found that author. The Fifth Act is a first draft of history that feels like a timeless classic.;br>;
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***A New York Times bestseller*** 'A rousing tale of derring-do' The Times Book of the Week 'A cracking story about an extraordinarily brave woman' Telegraph Best Holiday Beach Reads 'As riveting as any thriller, and as hard to put down' Mick Herron, New York Times 'Gripping ... superb ... a rounded portrait of a complicated, resourceful, determined and above all brave woman' Irish Times In 1942, the Gestapo would stop at nothing to track down a mysterious 'limping lady' who was fighting for the freedom of France. The Nazi chiefs issued a simple but urgent command: 'She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her.' The Gestapo's target was Virginia Hall, a glamorous American with a wooden leg who broke through the barriers against her gender and disability to be the first woman to infiltrate Vichy France for the SOE. In so doing she helped turn the course of the intelligence war. This is the epic tale of an heiress who determined that a hunting accident would not define her existence; a young woman who gambled her life to fight for the freedoms she believed in; an espionage novice who helped to light the flame of French Resistance. Based on new and extensive research, Sonia Purnell has for the first time uncovered the full secret life of Virginia Hall, an astounding and inspiring story of heroism, spycraft, resistance and personal triumph over shocking adversity. An Amazon.com Book of the Month * USA Today 5 Must Reads * New York Times Editors Pick Lire la suite Fermer

Throughout history, the concept of command -- as both a way to achieve objectives and as an assertion of authority -- has been essential to military action and leadership. But, as Sir Lawrence Freedman argues, it is also deeply political. Command has been reconstructed and revolutionized since the Second World War by nuclear warfare, small-scale guerrilla land operations and cyber interference. Freedman here takes a global perspective, systematically investigating the practice and politics of command since 1945 through a wide range of conflicts from the French Colonial Wars, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bangladesh Liberation War to North Vietnam''s Easter Offensive of 1972, the Falklands War, the First Chechen War and the Iraq War. By highlighting the political nature of strategy, Freedman shows that military decision-making cannot be separated from civilian life and that commanders must now have the sensibility to navigate politics as well as warfare.> Lire la suite Fermer

Kim Philby was the most notorious British defector and Soviet mole in history. Agent, double agent, traitor and enigma, he betrayed every secret of Allied operations to the Russians in the early years of the Cold War.

Philby's two closest friends in the intelligence world, Nicholas Elliott of MI6 and James Jesus Angleton, the CIA intelligence chief, thought they knew Philby better than anyone, and then discovered they had not known him at all. This is a story of intimate duplicity; of loyalty, trust and treachery, class and conscience; of an ideological battle waged by men with cut-glass accents and well-made suits in the comfortable clubs and restaurants of London and Washington; of male friendships forged, and then systematically betrayed.

With access to newly released MI5 files and previously unseen family papers, and with the cooperation of former officers of MI6 and the CIA, this definitive biography unlocks what is perhaps the last great secret of the Cold War.
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