Max Hastings is best known as an acclaimed journalist and military historian. But what is perhaps less well known is his love of the countryside and its pursuits, above all fishing and shooting, which he indulges as often as he can escape his urban working environment. In this classic selection of gentle, contemplative musings, Max Hastings shares some of his favourite rural moments; tramping the snipe bogs of Waterford; dogging hedges in Hampshire and moors in Sutherland; casting a fly from Scotland to Iceland and Alaska; and shooting in India and the west of Ireland. Combining a journalist's knack for storytelling with the enthusiasm of the dedicated amateur, Outside Days is the perfect companion for anyone who revels in the freedom of the outdoors.

Outside Days - Some Adventures With Rod and Gun

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

 'His masterpiece' Antony Beevor, Spectator

 'A masterful performance' Sunday Times

 'By far the best book on the Vietnam War' Gerald Degroot, The Times, Book of the Year

 Vietnam became the Western world's most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu, the Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam, and less familiar battles such as the bloodbath at Daido, where a US Marine battalion was almost wiped out, together with extraordinary recollections of Ho Chi Minh's warriors. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed 2 million people.

 Many writers treat the war as a US tragedy, yet Hastings sees it as overwhelmingly that of the Vietnamese people, of whom forty died for every American. US blunders and atrocities were matched by those committed by their enemies. While all the world has seen the image of a screaming, naked girl seared by napalm, it forgets countless eviscerations, beheadings and murders carried out by the communists. The people of both former Vietnams paid a bitter price for the Northerners' victory in privation and oppression. Here is testimony from Vietcong guerrillas, Southern paratroopers, Saigon bargirls and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen from South Dakota, Marines from North Carolina, Huey pilots from Arkansas.

 No past volume has blended a political and military narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal experiences, in the fashion that Max Hastings' readers know so well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this struggle with so many lessons for the 21st century about the misuse of military might to confront intractable political and cultural challenges. He marshals testimony from warlords and peasants, statesmen and soldiers, to create an extraordinary record.

Vietnam - An Epic History of a Divisive War 1945-1975

The Korean War is journalist and military historian Sir Max Hastings' compelling account of the forgotten war.'The best narrative history of the Korean conflict' - GuardianOn 25 June 1950 the invasion of South Korea by the Communist North launched one of the bloodiest conflicts of the last century. The seemingly limitless power of the Chinese-backed North was thrown against the ferocious firepower of the UN-backed South in a war that can be seen today as the stark prelude to Vietnam. Max Hastings draws on first-hand accounts of those who fought on both sides to produce this vivid and incisive reassessment of the Korean War, bringing the military and human dimensions into sharp focus. Critically acclaimed on publication, republished with an introduction from the author, The Korean War remains the best narrative history of this conflict.'A brilliant tour-de-force' - Times Literary Supplement'Excellent, readable history by a master of the genre' - Daily Mail'This book establishes him as one of the leading British military historians.' - New York Times

The Korean War - An Epic Conflict 1950-1953

Bestselling author Max Hastings offers a welcome re-evaluation of one of the most gripping and tense international events in modern history-the Cuban Missile Crisis-providing a people-focused narrative that explores the attitudes and conduct of Russians, Cubans, Americans, and a terrified world that followed each moment as it unfolded. In The Abyss, Max Hastings turns his focus to one of the most terrifying events of the mid-twentieth century-the thirteen days in October 1962 when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war. Hastings looks at the conflict with fresh eyes, focusing on the people at the heart of the crisis-America President John F. Kennedy, Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, and a host of their advisors. Combining in-depth research with Hasting's well-honed insights, The Abyss is a human history that unfolds on a wide, colorful canvas. As the action moves back and forth from Moscow to Washington, DC, to Havana, Hastings seeks to explain, as much as to describe, the attitudes and conduct of the Soviets, Cubans, and Americans, and to recreate the tension and heightened fears of countless innocent bystanders whose lives hung in the balance. Reflecting on the outcome of these events, he reveals how the aftermath of this momentous crisis continues to reverberate today. Powerful, and riveting, filled with compelling detail and told with narrative flair, The Abyss is history at its finest.

The Abyss - Nuclear Crisis Cuba 1962

Welcome to London in lockdown - in 1665

 This timely release of a year in the life of London's greatest diarist comes with an introduction by bestselling author, Max Hastings.

 The plague that swept through London in 1665 brought the city to a grinding halt. The bustle of business gave way to a grim air of fear as nearly a quarter of Londoners were struck down. Yet for Samuel Pepys, life went on. In his lifetime, Pepys was a naval administrator and a friend and colleague of the powerful and learned. For nearly ten years he kept a private diary in which he recorded life in Restoration London, commenting on politics, public events and private matters. As well as recording public and historical events, Pepys paints a vivid picture of his personal life, from his socializing and amorous entanglements, to his theatre-going and his work at the Navy Board. Unequalled for its frankness, high spirits and sharp observations, the diary is both a literary masterpiece and a marvellous portrait of seventeenth-century life. In 1665 that life was lived under an ever-present shadow of death, and Pepys offers us a glimpse into how that affected London and Londoners alike.

1665 – Diary of a Plague Year

'A gripping new collection from Max Hastings that puts you at the heart of the battle . Compelling' Daily Mail

 'An unmissable read' Sunday Times

 Soldiers is a very personal gathering of sparkling, gripping tales by many writers, about men and women who have borne arms, reflecting bestselling historian Max Hastings's lifetime of studying war. It rings the changes through the centuries, between the heroic, tragic and comic; the famous and the humble. The nearly 350 stories illustrate vividly what it is like to fight in wars, to live and die as a warrior, from Greek and Roman times through to recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 Here you will meet Jewish heroes of the Bible, Rome's captain of the gate, Queen Boudicca, Joan of Arc, Cromwell, Wellington, Napoleon's marshals, Ulysses S. Grant, George S. Patton and the modern SAS. There are tales of great writers who served in uniform including Cobbett and Tolstoy, Edward Gibbon and Siegfried Sassoon, Marcel Proust and Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell and George MacDonald Fraser. Here are also stories of the female 'abosi' fighters of Dahomey and heroic ambulance drivers of World War I, together with the new-age women soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The stories reflect a change of mood towards warfare through the ages: though nations and movements continue to inflict terrible violence upon each other, most of humankind has retreated from the old notion of war as a sport or pastime, to acknowledge it as the supreme tragedy.

 This is a book to inspire in turn fascination, excitement, horror, amazement, occasionally laughter. Max Hastings mingles respect for the courage of those who fight with compassion for those who become their victims, above all civilians, and especially in the twenty-first century, which some are already calling 'the Post-Heroic Age'.

Soldiers - Great Stories of War and Peace

A Times History Book of the Year 2022

 From the #1 bestselling historian Max Hastings 'the heart-stopping story of the missile crisis' Daily Telegraph 

 The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most perilous event in history, when mankind faced a looming nuclear collision between the United States and Soviet Union. During those weeks, the world gazed into the abyss of potential annihilation.

 Max Hastings's graphic new history tells the story from the viewpoints of national leaders, Russian officers, Cuban peasants, American pilots and British disarmers. Max Hastings deploys his accustomed blend of eye-witness interviews, archive documents and diaries, White House tape recordings, top-down analysis, first to paint word-portraits of the Cold War experiences of Fidel Castro's Cuba, Nikita Khrushchev's Russia and Kennedy's America; then to describe the nail-biting Thirteen Days in which Armageddon beckoned.

 Hastings began researching this book believing that he was exploring a past event from twentieth century history. He is as shocked as are millions of us around the world, to discover that the rape of Ukraine gives this narrative a hitherto unimaginable twenty-first century immediacy. We may be witnessing the onset of a new Cold War between nuclear-armed superpowers.

 To contend with today's threat, which Hastings fears will prove enduring, it is critical to understand how, sixty years ago, the world survived its last glimpse into the abyss. Only by fearing the worst, he argues, can our leaders hope to secure the survival of the planet.

Abyss - The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962

8 juin 1944. La division Das Reich, forte de 15000 hommes, quitte Montauban en direction de la Normandie sous le commandement du général Heinz Lammerding. Entravée dans sa progression par la Résistance, des opérations de commando et les bombardements de l'aviation alliée, elle va sur son trajet acquérir une terrible notoriété, en se livrant, à Tulle et à Oradour-sur-Glane, à deux représailles sanglantes. Ces exactions barbares allaient avoir d'importantes conséquences au niveau stratégique. Car si la division Das Reich était arrivée à temps sur les lieux du débarquement, elle aurait, sinon permis aux forces allemandes de rejeter les alliés à la mer, du moins contribué à différer l'issue de la bataille, retardant du même coup la libération rapide de la France. Voici l'une des pages les plus douloureuses et les plus extraordinaires de la guerre secrète dont certains épisodes n'avaient encore jamais été racontés.

La division Das Reich - Tulle, Oradour-sur-Glane, Normandie 8 juin-20 juin 1944

A two-book collection of Max Hastings' bestselling works about the 20th century's most terrible global conflicts.

 'Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914': In this centenary year, Hastings' thrilling and also deeply moving account seeks to explain both how Europe plunged into what was then called 'The Great War', what befell the millions of people of many nations caught up in the first months on the battlefield and as civilian victims.

 'All Hell Let Loose: The World at War 1939-1945': This is 'everyman's story' of 1939-45 from a host of viewpoints across the world- British fighter pilots and Russians tanker crew, Chinese peasants and French housewives, American naval gunners and Italian partisans. Here, with an extraordinary blend of top-down and bottom-up testimony is Hastings's acclaimed answer to the question 'what was World War II like?'

Outside Days - Some Adventures With Rod and Gun

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