H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-War@h-net.msu.edu (July 2008)
Robin Neillands. _The Dieppe Raid: The Story of the Disastrous 1942 Expedition_. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. 292 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0253-34781-7.
Reviewed for H-War by Jean Morin, Independent Scholar
A Flawed Plan from the Start
Robin Neillands is a prolific author who has made many names for himself in many genres and whose output defies boldly the confines of time. As well as having written perhaps ninety books under various _noms de plume_, he has become one of the most popular military historians in the book market of the last decade. His study _Bomber War_ (2001), was outstanding. Sadly, Robin Neillands died last year at the age of 70, not quite finished with a biography of Montgomery.
His book on Dieppe was among his last. It is one for which he was well qualified, having been a Royal Marines commando himself and having befriended such luminaries in the field of _coups de main_ as generals R. D. "Titch" Houghton and Peter Young (DSO [Distinguished Service Order] in
Dieppe), who shared memories with him of their own involvement in cross-Channel raids during the Second World War, including that of Dieppe. Neillands has obviously had personal experience in learning to plan such operations or walk the talk of the commando, and his book is professional
and sensible. The British commandos did well on the periphery of Operation Jubilee and one gets the impression that this Dieppe study wants to make them shine ...
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