Jonathan Boff | The Spectator columnists & writers

Spitfires of the sea: the secret exploits of the Royal Navy’s 15th Motor Gun Boat Flotilla

Fast boats and fast women have been the ruin of many a poor boy. But they can also prove a triumphant mix, as the wartime exploits of the Royal Navy’s 15th Motor Gun Boat Flotilla, described in Tim Spicer’s highly enjoyable book, show. An under-cover unit run during the second world war by the Secret Intelligence Service, it used sleek 110ft motor launches to ferry agents and supplies between England and France. Leaving Dartmouth in the late afternoon, their mission was to race across 100 miles of Channel, evade German patrol boats, navigate the rocks and tidal races of the Brittany coast to a pinpoint spot under the noses of enemy sentries, paddle through the surf and, with luck, rendezvous with the Resistance.

How Churchill’s success hinged on a small Mediterranean island

If you can tell the difference between Jack Hawkins and John Mills, and between a Stuka and a Sten gun, perhaps after long, wet afternoons watching black-and-white war films, this is the book for you. Max Hastings is a wily operator who knows exactly what his readers want and with Operation Pedestal he has produced it for them again. The latest book off the apparently unstoppable Hastings conveyor belt tells the dramatic story of one of the most ambitious and dangerous naval operations of the war, and tells it well. Malta, an island slightly smaller than Birmingham, sits at the crossroads of the Mediterranean, 60 miles south of Sicily. A base for the Royal Navy since Napoleonic times, during the second world war it was well positioned for interdicting German and Italian supply lines feeding Rommel’s forces fighting the British and Commonwealth Eighth Army in North Africa.

The carnage of the Western Front was over surprisingly quickly

This book does not mess about. It tells the story of the fighting on the Western Front between 1914 and 1918, just like it says on the tin. It offers a proudly traditional military history, from the opening skirmishes, through the titanic clashes of the Marne and Verdun, the Somme and Ypres, on to the often overlooked Allied sweep to victory of the Hundred Days. It describes what happened when, where and why. There is no discussion of why the war was fought in the first place or of what the men thought they were fighting for. The war here, as it was for that generation, is simply an inescapable fact. We learn enough about the political context and manoeuvring in London, Paris and Berlin to explain events on the battlefield, but no more.

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