Matthew Parker

This book is a story of the horrors of war seen from the perspective of the soldiers on the battlefield. Before D-Day there was Monte Cassino, the desperate six-month struggle in the mountains of central Italy that left more than 350,000 men dead or wounded. Hitler had declared that the Allied drive toward Rome must be stopped at all costs, and German commander Kesselring chose the fortresslike monastery of Monte Cassino as the centerpiece of the...

"For two months every year, from 1946 to his death eighteen years later, Ian Fleming lived at Goldeneye, the house he built on a point of high land overlooking a small white sand beach on Jamaicas stunning north coast. All the James Bond novels and stories were written here. This book explores the huge influence of Jamaica on the creation of Fleming's iconic post-war hero"--Dust jacket flap.

"At the beginning of the 1650s, wrecked by plague and civil war, England was in ruins. Yet shimmering on the horizon was a vision of paradise called Willoughbyland. When Sir Walter Raleigh set out to South America to find the legendary city of El Dorado, he paved the way for an endless series of adventurers who would struggle against the harsh reality of South America's wild jungles. Six decades later, when a group of English gentlemen expelled from...