Author: Lewis, Damien 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000Published on 7 May 2026 by Quercus Publishing in the United Kingdom.Hardback | 320 pages, plate section242 x 164 x 30 | 540g In the spirit of previous volumes, Damien Lewis reveals the untold stories of the war's most daring and audacious escapes as executed by the world's most famous fighting force, the SAS.Reaching back into the earliest origins of the SAS legend, and Operation Colossus, the volume opens with a series of death-defying escapes in Italy, where bluff, deception and audacity win the day. It moves on to an epic solo escape across the sun-blasted Sahara desert, as one man, long given up for dead, achieves the seemingly impossible. It goes on to chronicle one of the most successful raids by the SAS deep behind enemy lines, and how a terribly injured veteran of that mission used the secret escape lines of the Vatican to make it back to Allied lines, in a tale replete with cloak-and-dagger intrigue. From there, the reader is plunged into a series of daring POW-rescue missions, laced with Robin-Hood-style assassinations and robberies, plus a breathtaking getaway at mission's end. And finally, we learn of how one patrol's desperate, close-quarter battle to take an enemy-held fortress, led to tragic loss but an equally daring getaway. Working with the family members of those portrayed, and relying upon unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, war reports and more, this is gripping narrative history at its finest, delivered in typical Damien Lewis edge-of-the-seat style.
