An Englishman at War: The Wartime Diaries of Stanley Christopherson DSO MC TD 1939-45

From the outbreak of war in September 1939 all the way to the smouldering ruins of Berlin in 1945, via Palestine, Tobruk, El Alamein, D-Day, Nijmegen and the crossing of the Rhine, An Englishman at War is a unique first-person account of the Second World War.

The Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, Stanley Christopher's regiment, went to war as amateurs, equipped with courage but very little else, and ended up one of the most experienced, highly trained and most valued armoured units in the British Army. Their journey through the war, learning through mistakes and tragedy as well as from a determined desire to improve, can, in many ways, be seen to reflect the experience of the British Army as a whole. From Alamein onwards, the Sherwood Rangers were in the vanguard of almost every action in which they took part, and over the course of the conflict, they amassed an astonishing thirty battle honours.

Christopherson himself was to rise from a junior subaltern to become the commanding officer of the regiment soon after the D-Day landings. He took part in all thirty battle honours, and collected a Distinguished Service Order, two Military Crosses and an American Silver Star, as well as being Mentioned in Despatches four times. His is an extraordinary story.

Stanley Christopherson (Author)
Stanley Christopherson was born in 1912 and trained to be a lawyer before joining the Sherwood Rangers in the autumn of 1939. Apart from two weeks in hospital, he experienced the Second World War on the Western Front in its entirety and watched as the very nature of war changed and evolved. IN the North African campaign, he engaged in the Battles of Alam Halfa and El Alamein and the fall of Tunis. On D-Day he landed on the Gold Beach, before moving across France and Belgium and onto Holland where his regiment endured the terrible fighting in the aftermath of Operation Market Garden.

James Holland was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, and studied history at Durham University. His books include Fortress Malta, Italy’s Sorrow, The Battle of Britain and most recently, Dam Busters. He has also made acclaimed television programmes on the Battle of Britain and the Dambusters raid for BBC2, and is Co-Chair of the Chalke Valley History Festival.

James Holland (Edited by)
James Holland is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning historian, writer, and broadcaster. The author of a number of best-selling histories including Fortress Malta: An Island Under Siege, Battle of Britain, Dam Busters, and most recently, The War in the West and Big Week, he has also written nine works of historical fiction, including the Jack Tanner novels.

He has presented - and written - a large number of television programmes and series, including the film Normandy 44 for the BBC, and is a mainstay of the internationally successful Nazi Megastrucutres. He has scripted and is producing a feature film of his novel, A Pair of Silver Wings.

He is also Chair of the Chalke Valley History Festival, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Research Fellow at Swansea University. He can be found on Twitter as @James1940.