The World At War - Mark Arnold-Forster

Reading this book and, even more so, listening to the account of the trials and sufferings of servicemen and civilians in Laurence Olivier’s sorrowful narration in the Thames Television documentary of the same name, did for any remaining fancy that war was about heroism. I was thirteen and entering sombre adolescence. The bulldozing of the bodies in the concentration camps is an image I will never forget.