The run-up to a giant leap

World history is pitted with world wars. Last century was conceited enough to call its pair the First and Second. One of the turning-points of that Second was the Anglo-American landing in Normandy on 6 June 1944, of which the 60th anniversary falls next year.

David Stafford, a leading 20th-century historian (once a professor at Toronto), has got in early with a fine book on what the run-up to the landing felt like, both to the much-publicised high command and to far more junior combatants and civilians.