Telling the story of Operation Aerial to an American audience

I was delighted recently when the distinguished Washington correspondent Llewellyn King asked me to join him and his fellow presenter, Adam Clayton Powell III, on their popular White House Chronicle programme to talk about what happened in France in June 1940 after Dunkirk fell to the Germans on 4 June.

This, of course, is the subject of my recent book – Operation Aerial: Churchill’s Second Miracle of Deliverance.

The challenge was to pick out some of the stories in the book that would be most likely to appeal to a North American audience. Fortunately, there are several angles that are either universal, such as the sinking of the Lancastria at St Nazaire, feature America journalists, such as the redoubtable Virginia Cowles, or regiments from Canada.

You can watch the result as White House Chronicle kindly gave me permission to share it widely.

The book would make an ideal Christmas present for anyone interested in WW2 history. The complex – and previously untold story – is made accessible by telling it through the voices of the people who were involved.

It is available in hardback or paperback from the publisher Sabrestorm, all good bookshops and on Amazon.