With real-life echoes of SAS Rogue Heroes – this is an astonishing account of Europe’s biggest major conflict, told through the eyes of a ragbag collection of foreign fighters

Three days after Russian tanks roll into Ukraine, President Volodymr Zelensky issues a desperate appeal for foreign military volunteers to help defend his country. Thousands answer the call from all over the world: some of them experienced soldiers, others novices who’ve never held a gun before.

Among their ranks are high-minded idealists, adventure-seekers bored with civilian life, and ex-criminals seeking redemption – all risking their lives against the world’s most vicious superpower. Some flee at the first sign of trouble, others become heroes; many are killed, and a few turn their guns on each other.

This is their story – often terrifying, often tragic, sometimes comic, and sometimes glorious?

September, 1939. While Britain hovered on the brink of the Second World War, a team of unlikely and ill-assorted characters assembled in their secret headquarters. They had left their civilian roles as politicians, journalists, novelists and spies, advertisers, artists and even forgers, to work for a covert government organisation. Their goals: to weaken enemy morale, sow confusion and encourage resistance. In the ‘hush-hush’ village of Aspley Guise near Woburn Abbey (8 miles from the codebreakers at Bletchley Park), they set to work.

The once top-secret wartime efforts of the Political Warfare Executive were remarkable in their variety and inventiveness – from pornographic leaflet drops to rumour campaigns, underground publications and fake French and German radio shows. But to break Nazi morale, these men and women found themselves skirting the edges of their own morality. What do you lose when you deploy lies – even brilliant, believable lies – to achieve your ends?

Des describes exactly what it takes to be an elite special forces operator. From raw recruit to trained fighting machine – including the heart-breaking moment he was forced to withdraw, only to begin the process again – Des shares the details of his personal journey, itself a tale of prevailing against almost overwhelming odd. He teaches us valuable life skills by taking us deep into the training regime itself: fitness, navigation, endurance, weapons and combat training, survival techniques in hostile climates, the terrifying jungle phase, the dark arts of escape and evasion, the secret of surviving interrogation.

No one’s lifted the lid on what it takes to join the SAS and become the best of the best. Until now.

Praise for Bravo Three Zero

‘A must read. Honesty, integrity and real experience that puts you in the thick of the action.’ Billy Billingham

‘Thrilling’ Express

In the wake of the Nazi invasion of Europe, the tentative sparks of resistance in occupied countries were fanned by Britain’s Special Operations Executive. Across the continent, SOE recruited women to “set Europe ablaze.” Working as secret agents and saboteurs, these individuals bolstered resistance from within and provided much needed support and weapons. F Section’s actions in France are renowned, and today some operatives have become household names. But what happened to the women who worked outside France and those who were locally recruited?

In this gripping account, Kate Vigurs tells the stories of the lesser-known women who worked across Europe, from the Netherlands to Belgium and Poland to Denmark. She explores too the lives of Jewish agents recruited in Mandate Palestine for missions in Eastern Europe. These are stories of trial and error, escape and even execution. Mission Europe examines why women were recruited, analysing their successes and contributions-and celebrates the ordinary women who did extraordinary things.

Starting at the very bottom of the ranks, Seekings was a farm labourer’s son who climbed from private to squadron sergeant-major and became one of the British Army’s most highly decorated non-commissioned officers of WWII. In short, Seekings was an ordinary man who did extraordinary things. His is a remarkable story – one of fierce ambition, camaraderie, inner strength and heroism as he transcended his humble beginnings in the Fen fields of Cambridgeshire. And he was there from the very first day of the SAS, which was born in the late summer of 1941.

Using audio material from the Imperial War Museum and previously unseen material from Reg’s collection of notebooks and handwritten accounts of operations, this is a comprehensive and engaging portrait of one of the unit’s all-time greats.

‘Fresh and gripping’ Telegraph

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

On April 30, 1980, six heavily armed gunmen burst into the Iranian embassy on Princes Gate, overlooking Hyde Park in London. There they took 26 hostages, including embassy staff, visitors, and three British citizens.

A tense six-day siege ensued as millions gathered around screens across the country to witness the longest news flash in British television history, in which police negotiators and psychiatrists sought a bloodless end to the standoff, while the SAS – hitherto an organisation shrouded in secrecy – laid plans for a daring rescue mission: Operation Nimrod.

Drawing on unpublished source material, exclusive interviews with the SAS, and testimony from witnesses including hostages, negotiators, intelligence officers and the on-site psychiatrist, bestselling historian Ben Macintyre takes readers on a gripping journey from the years and weeks of build-up on both sides, to the minute-by-minute account of the siege and rescue.

Recreating the dramatic conversations between negotiators and hostages, the cutting-edge intelligence work happening behind-the-scenes, and the media frenzy around this moment of international significance, The Siege is the remarkable story of what really happened on those fateful six days, and the first full account of a moment that forever changed the way the nation thought about the SAS – and itself.

‘The pre-eminent historian of the secret world . . . His books have set the gold standard for accurate historical reporting, but read like heart-pounding thrillers’ Mick Herron

‘Macintyre does true-life espionage better than anyone else’ John Preston

The untold story of the D-Day scientists who changed special operations forever.

On the beaches of Normandy, two summers before D-Day, the Allies attempted an all but forgotten landing. Of the nearly seven thousand Allied troops sent ashore, only a few hundred survived the terrible massacre, and the reason for the debacle was a lack of reconnaissance. The shore turned out to be impassable to tanks. The Nazis had hidden obstacles in unexpected places. The fortifications were more numerous – and deadly – than imagined. The Allies knew they needed to take the fight to Hitler on the European mainland to end the war, but they could not afford to be unprepared again. A small group of eccentric researchers, experimenting on themselves from inside pressure tanks in the middle of the London air raids, explored the deadly science needed to enable the critical reconnaissance vessels and underwater breathing apparatuses that would enable the Allies’ dramatic, history-making success during the next major beach landing: D-Day.

From the author of Sunday Times #1 bestsellers COLDITZ, SAS: ROGUE HEROES and THE SPY AND THE TRAITOR . . .

On April 30, 1980, six heavily armed gunmen burst into the Iranian embassy on Princes Gate, overlooking Hyde Park in London. There they took 26 hostages, including embassy staff, visitors, and three British citizens.

A tense six-day siege ensued as millions gathered around screens across the country to witness the longest news flash in British television history, in which police negotiators and psychiatrists sought a bloodless end to the standoff, while the SAS – hitherto an organisation shrouded in secrecy – laid plans for a daring rescue mission: Operation Nimrod.

Drawing on unpublished source material, exclusive interviews with the SAS, and testimony from witnesses including hostages, negotiators, intelligence officers and the on-site psychiatrist, bestselling historian Ben Macintyre takes readers on a gripping journey from the years and weeks of build-up on both sides, to the minute-by-minute account of the siege and rescue.

Recreating the dramatic conversations between negotiators and hostages, the cutting-edge intelligence work happening behind-the-scenes, and the media frenzy around this moment of international significance, The Siege is the remarkable story of what really happened on those fateful six days, and the first full account of a moment that forever changed the way the nation thought about the SAS – and itself.

‘Masterly . . . it has never been recounted so pleasurably as it has been here’ New York Times

‘Macintyre does true-life espionage better than anyone else’ John Preston

Born in Germany in 1922, Colin Anson’s (Claus Ascher) childhood was marked by the trials of Nazism. His father was arrested by the Gestapo in 1937 and transported to Dachau, where he died shortly after. Colin, aged just seventeen, escaped to Britain in the Kindertransport. As soon as he was old enough, Colin volunteered in the Pioneer Corps. Then, in 1942, he was recruited for the elite commando unit X-Troop.

Colin took part in the invasions of Sicily and Italy in 1943, where he sustained a near-fatal injury. But just months later, he returned to duty. He fought in the Yugoslav islands, became the first Allied soldier to liberate Corfu, and was stationed in postwar Frankfurt.

In this unique biography, Helen Fry traces the remarkable story of Colin’s life. Drawing on extensive interviews, Fry recounts his actions in X-Troop and beyond in his own words-and sheds new light on the experience of refugees in the British forces.