‘No other general history of the war amalgamates so successfully the gut-wrenching personal details and the essential strategic arguments. Melding the worm’s eye view and the big picture is a difficult trick to pull off – but Hastings has triumphed’ The Times

Examining the espionage and intelligence stories of World War II, on a global basis, bringing together the British, American, German, Russian and Japanese histories. Spies, codes and guerillas played critical roles in the Second World War, exploited by every nation in the struggle to gain secret knowledge of its foes, and to sow havoc behind the fronts. In The Secret War, Max Hastings presents a worldwide cast of characters and some extraordinary sagas of intelligence and Resistance, to create a new perspective on the greatest conflict in history.

Max Hastings is the author of numerous books, many about warfare, including the bestselling and critically acclaimed ‘All Hell Let Loose’. In his early career as a correspondent, he reported on the 1982 Falklands War, experiences which he described in his memoir ‘Going to the Wars’. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of King's College London, he was knighted in 2002.

Tickets are £5 and can be deducted from the cost of the book (£30) if purchased on the evening.