SOLDIER, ESCAPER, SPYMASTER, POLITICIAN – Airey Neave was assassinated in the House of Commons car park in 1979. Forty years after his death, Patrick Bishop’s lively, action-packed biography examines the life, heroic war and death of one of Britain’s most remarkable 20th century figures.SOLDIER, ESCAPER, SPYMASTER, POLITICIAN – Airey Neave was assassinated in the House of Commons car park in 1979. Forty years after his death, Patrick Bishop’s lively, action-packed biography examines the life, heroic war and death of one of Britain’s most remarkable 20th century figures.Airey Neave was one of the most extraordinary figures of his generation. Taken prisoner during WW2, he was the first British officer to escape from Colditz and using the code name ‘Saturday’ became a key figure in the IS9 escape and evasion organisation which spirited hundreds of Allied airmen and soldiers out of Occupied Europe. A lawyer by training, he served the indictments on the Nazi leaders at the Nuremburg war trials. An ardent Cold War warrior, he was mixed up in several of the great spy scandals of the period.Most people might consider these achievements enough for a single career, but he went on to become the man who made Margaret Thatcher, mounting a brilliantly manipulative campaign in the 1975 Tory leadership to bring her to power.And yet his death is as fascinating as his remarkable life. On Friday, 30 March 1979, a bomb planted beneath his car exploded while he was driving up the ramp of the House of Commons underground car park, killing him instantly. The murder was claimed by the breakaway Irish Republican group, the INLA. His killers have never been identified.Patrick Bishop’s new book, published to mark the 40th anniversary of his death, is a lively and concise biography of this remarkable man. It answers the question of who killed him and why their identities have been hidden for so long and is written with the support of the Neave family.‘Sympathetic, magnificent … This exemplary biography is a timely corrective when the fashion is for politicians to run away after they suffer a setback’ Times‘Neave was a brave, modest and decent man. Bishop shows him also to be complex, sometimes troubled, and more interesting than many who did not know him understood. He deserves a first-rate biography, and Bishop has written it’ Daily Telegraph‘It succeeds triumphantly. Masterly on military matters, sympathetic, psychologically acute and alert to irony’ Sunday Telegraph‘Bishop writes with admirable brevity and insight’ Sunday TimesPraise for Patrick Bishop:‘This is a terrifically readable, authoritative book that told me many fascinating things I did not know’ Max Hastings, Sunday Times‘As a former war correspondent with more than 30 years’ experience, Bishop brings journalistic strengths to his second career as a popular historian: an easily readable and exciting writing style, a knowledge of what fighting means to those at the sharp end, a nose for the nub of the story, and an admirable compassion for the victims of war on all sides…a book that at once educates, explains, and excites’ BBC History magazine, Book of the Month‘Monumental … after Bishop's pilot's eye views of the war in Fighter Boys and Bomber Boys, Air Force Blue counts as a publishing event. It won't disappoint” Times‘Compelling … Mr Bishop has an enormous tale to tell as he leads up to 1939 and six years of formative war…what Mr. Bishop does so well is to show how the RAF came to be such a distinctive and effective force’ Country Life‘Full of excellent and vivid stories, this terrifically readable and authoritative book tells the dramatic story of the RAF during the Second World War’ Sunday Times‘This meticulously compiled survey sets out to combine encomium with a series of unblinkered evaluations’ TLSPatrick Bishop is the author of the critically acclaimed and best-selling ‘Fighter Boys’, ‘Bomber Boys’, ‘3 Para’ and ‘Ground Truth’. Previously, he was a foreign correspondent for over twenty years, reporting from conflicts all over the world.• Patrick Bishop is a best-selling and critically acclaimed historian of war, with a string of Sunday Times bestsellers to his name. Most recently Air Force Blue has sold 20k HBs and 22k B formats (since March 18).• His account of 3 Para in Afghanistan in 2006 has sold 70k HBs, 25k TPBs airside and Ireland and 136k PBs – over 230k TCM copies in total.• His books have been published in many special sales formats.• Fighter Boys sold 28.5k HBs and 136k B-format paperbacks.• Bomber Boys sold 28.5k HBs and 124k PBs.• The Man Who Was Saturday is published with the support of the Neave family who have given Patrick access to previously unseen papers and contacts.• March 2019 marks the 40th anniversary of Neave’s death at the time of Britain’s exit from Europe and a resurgence of the Irish difficulties that so dominated Neave’s political career.• This is not a cradle-to-grave biography but concentrates on the key phases and episodes of Neave’s life: his war, his work in espionage during the 1950s, his work with Margaret Thatcher and as Shadow Northern Ireland secretary at height of the Troubles, and his death.
Publicat de: HarperCollins Publishers