Now in its seventeenth year, this new edition of the best-selling series is a review of the year made up of the wry and astute observations of the unpublished Telegraph letter writers.
 
Readers of the Telegraph Letters Page will be fondly aware of the eclectic combination of learned wisdom, wistful nostalgia and robust good sense of humour that characterise its correspondence – and this volume contains yet more pearls of insight.

With an agenda as enticing as ever, the seventeenth book in the bestselling Unpublished Letters series will prove, once again, that the Telegraph’s readers still have a shrewd sense of what really matters.

Malcolm Gaskill knew two things about his great-uncle Ralph’s wartime adventures: he’d been a prisoner in Italy, and he’d cut his way out of a train with a knife and fork. Apart from that, he’d faded into family folklore, lost to view. Until, one hot afternoon in an English country garden, a chance conversation set Gaskill on his uncle’s trail?

What Ralph really did in the war was, he discovers, even more extraordinary than the exaggerations of family myth. From last-ditch fighting in the Libyan desert and incarceration in a Puglian prisoner-of-war camp, to desperate, dramatic escapes and the assuming of an entirely new identity among the peasants and partisans of the Italian Alps, Gaskill traces a life transformed by conflict, while lifting the curtain on a long-forgotten episode of the Second World War.

Yet The Glass Mountain is about more than war: it’s a haunting exploration of what it means to encounter the past, and how we remember, forget and recover it. As he follows his uncle’s path through dusty archives and the landscapes, towns and villages of present-day Italy, Gaskill finds himself confronted by questions that go to the heart of how we think about the people who came before us: Why do stories matter? How much of the past can ever be true?

Decidedly absurd and always entertaining, the very best letters to The Times are a treasure trove of wit, humour and unexpected insight.

From bizarre uses for old school ties to the nostalgic disappearance of the humble washing line, this collection lets you in on more than a few inside jokes from one of Britain’s longest-running correspondences.

While the other pages of the newspaper chronicle the pressing issues of the day, the Letters page often muses on the things that really matter. Now back for the third year in a row, Sir: The year in letters is a selection of the best of these letters, an elegant and erudite display of Times readers at their most whimsical and droll.

The perfect gift for anyone with a shrewd sense of humour, this book features:

• An absurdly entertaining round up of the year’s happenings
• More than 400 letters featured in The Times, curated by Letters editor Andrew Riley
• Original cartoons by Royston Robertson

‘Richly-layered and packed with insight, this riveting account of terrible events tells us as much about the present as it does the past’ Patrick Bishop, author of Paris ’44.

‘McKay’s magisterial history of Peter the Great’s monumental gift to Russia will become a classic’ Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana

In the crucible of the Second World War, Saint Petersburg – then known as Leningrad – stands as a testament to human endurance. As the Nazis encircle the city, intent on annihilating its 1.5 million inhabitants, the narrative plunges into the harrowing 900 days and nights of relentless hardship and unyielding resilience.

Starving residents, horrified by their own gaunt reflections, resort to bulking bread with wood shavings, consuming wallpaper paste, and even turning to their pets. Workers at the mass crematorium numb their horror with extra vodka rations. Yet, amid this suffering, the resilience of culture and hope shines through, with orchestras and theatres defiantly continuing their performances, a flicker of humanity against the backdrop of despair.

This book not only chronicles the Siege of Leningrad but also traces the pivotal importance of Saint Petersburg across the centuries. From Peter the Great’s visionary founding of the city, through its revolutionary rebirth as Petrograd and its Soviet identity as Leningrad, to its renaissance as Saint Petersburg in the post-Soviet era, we explore the layers of history that shape this extraordinary place.

‘The story of the siege of Leningrad is one of the great epics of modern history. It has been told many times before, but never in such an engrossing, moving, often horrifying but also uplifting way’ Brendan Simm

‘A new, complete portrait in time for the 80th anniversary […] Graff uses a wide array and diversity of voices that give a fuller picture of the lead-up to the invasion, as well as the fighting itself.’ –Associated Press

On 6th June 1944, the Allied invasion began. For hours, wave after wave of soldiers, sailors, and airmen crossed the channel and stormed the Normandy coast, fighting to gain a foothold in Nazi-occupied Northwest Europe. It was the largest combined air and seaborne invasion ever, involving over 150,000 Allied troops on the ground, and its eventual success became a critical turning point in the war, spelling the beginning of the end for the Third Reich.

As the events of that day fade from living memory, it’s more important than ever to understand what it felt like to be there and to live through it, on both sides. In this definitive work, Garrett M. Graff, the bestselling author of The Only Plane in the Sky: The Oral History of 9/11, compiles over 600 US, Canadian, UK, French and German voices to tell the full story of exactly how that historic day unfolded, in visceral detail – as well as the weeks and months leading up to it. From paratroopers to fighter pilots to nurses, generals, French villagers, German Defenders to Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, this is the most intimate re-telling of D-Day published to date.

** This book was originally published as D-Day The Oral History, and the contents are the same. **

Mose and her daughter Agna are incomers in the village, treated with suspicion. But young Liva, left out of the secrets her sister Tove and brother Hakken share, idolises Agna and follows her everywhere. Unwittingly, they lead the German soldiers to a perfect island. Once a haven for picnics and story-telling under the midnight sun, it is transformed into a grim POW camp. This is an unlikely place to find buried treasure, but it’s there.

Friendships are made and broken, family trust is turned upside down and lives change forever as Tove and Liva recall their childhood experiences of living through WW2 in a story that moves from light to darkness to light again.

Now in its sixteenth year, this new edition of the  best-selling series  is a review of the year made up of the wry and astute observations of the unpublished  Telegraph  letter writers.
 
Readers of the  Telegraph  Letters Page will be fondly aware of the eclectic combination of learned wisdom, wistful nostalgia and robust good sense of humour that characterise its correspondence – and this volume contains yet more pearls of insight.

With an agenda as enticing as ever, the sixteenth book in the bestselling Unpublished Letters series will prove, once again, that the  Telegraph’s  readers still have a shrewd sense of what really matters.
 

Decidedly absurd, and always entertaining, revel in the very best letters to The Times.

From tinned prime ministers to hiccup remedies, this collection lets you in on more than a few inside jokes from one of Britain’s longest-running correspondences.

While the other pages of the newspaper chronicle the pressing issues of the day, the Letters page often muses on the things that really matter. Now back for the second year in a row, Sir: The year in letters is a selection of the best of these letters, an elegant and erudite display of Times readers at their most whimsical and droll.

The perfect gift for anyone with a shrewd sense of humour, this book features:

An absurdly entertaining round up of the year’s happenings

More than 400 letters featured in The Times, curated by Letters editor Andrew Riley

Original cartoons by Royston Robertson