Mortimer, Gavin – The Bell Bookshop https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk Henley-on-Thames Thu, 21 Mar 2024 11:07:39 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/cropped-Bell-Background-Blue-32x32.png Mortimer, Gavin – The Bell Bookshop https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk 32 32 2SAS https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/2sas/ Thu, 12 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/?post_type=product&p=36006 Drawing on recently declassified files and interviews with veterans, this is a fascinating history of Bill Stirling and 2SAS – pioneering founders of modern special forces. David Stirling is the name synonymous with the wartime SAS, but the real brains behind the operation was in fact Bill Stirling, David’s eldest brother. Bill was described in the SAS War Diary as a ‘man from the shadows’; it was an apt description for, unlike his attention seeking brother, Bill shunned the spotlight. Now for the first time the truth – and the triumph – of 2SAS is revealed. Having originally joined the SOE in March 1940, Bill Stirling sailed for Cairo in 1941 and there had the idea for a small special forces unit to be led by his mercurial brother. But despite some success, David allowed the legendary 1SAS to drift under his leadership. Following his capture, Bill re-directed 2SAS, under his personal command, to the strategy he had originally envisaged: parachuting behind enemy lines to gather intelligence. Fully illustrated with rare and previously unpublished photographs, this compelling history details how 2SAS fought with ingenuity and aggression, from Italy and then into France before heading through Holland into Germany. The unit was capable of attacking by parachute, jeep or landing craft, establishing a template for future special forces’ operations. Their feats have been overshadowed by the many books that have focused on David and 1SAS. 2SAS corrects this oversight, revealing that the real innovator was Bill Stirling – the true pioneer of Who Dares Wins.

]]> David Stirling https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/david-stirling/ Thu, 26 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/?post_type=product&p=22902 Aristocrat, gambler, innovator and special forces legend, the life of David Stirling should need no retelling. His formation of the Special Air Service in the summer of 1941 led to a new form of warfare and Stirling is remembered as the father of special forces soldiering. But was he really a military genius or in fact a shameless self-publicist who manipulated people, and the truth, for this own ends? In this gripping and controversial biography Gavin Mortimer analyses Stirling’s complex character: the childhood speech impediment that shaped his formative years, the pressure from his overbearing mother, his fraught relationship with his brother, Bill, and the jealousy and inferiority he felt in the presence of his SAS second-in-command, the cold-blooded killer Paddy Mayne.

Stirling lived until old age, receiving a knighthood and plaudits from military forces around the world before his death in 1990. Yet as Mortimer dazzlingly shows, while Stirling was instrumental in selling the SAS to Churchill and senior officers, it was Mayne who really carried the regiment in the early days. Stirling was at best an incompetent soldier and at worst a foolhardy one, who jeopardised his men’s live with careless talk and hare-brained missions.

Drawing on interviews with SAS veterans who fought with Stirling and men who worked with him on his post-war projects, and examining recently declassified governments files about Stirling’s involvement in Aden, Libya and GB75, Mortimer’s riveting biography is incisive, bold, honest and written with his customary narrative panache. Impeccably researched and with the courage to challenge the mythical SAS ‘brand’, Mortimer brings to bear his unparalleled expertise as WW2’s premier special forces historian to dig beneath the legend and reveal the real David Stirling, a man who dared and deceived.

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