End of the Beginning

Phil Craig and Tim Clayton focus on the pivotal months of 1942 when Axis success still seemed capable of reshaping the war. Malta was under sustained attack, Rommel’s forces threatened British positions in Egypt and confidence in Churchill’s leadership was under pressure. Using personal testimony, the authors follow soldiers, aircrew, nurses and civilians across the Mediterranean and North African theatres as the strategic balance began to change.

The narrative culminates in the battles around El Alamein, examining the command disputes and earlier fighting that preceded Montgomery’s better-known victory. The book argues that Malta’s survival and the interruption of Axis supply lines were inseparable from the desert campaign. As with Finest Hour, Craig and Clayton combine operational history with eyewitness experience to strip away retrospective certainty from a year whose outcome was far from obvious to those living through it.